Two centuries after she became the first bestselling woman novelist, Jane Austen continues to exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary writers. Campbell-winner and Hugo-nominee Mary Robinette Kowal's long-awaited debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor Books, August 2010, 304pp) is the latest novel to pay homage to Miss Austen, this time with a (very restrained) fantasy twist.
Glamour
Imagine a Regency novel, replete with two sisters, one plain, one pretty and vivacious, an upstanding but ordinary father, and a mother prone to every ailment. When the handsome Mister Dunkirk and his quiet sister rent the neighbouring farm, joining a social set that revolves around Lady FitzCameron, Jane and Melody Ellsworth look forward to an exciting season of dances and afternoon visits, while the stage is set for Miss Kowal's affectionate pastiche.
Melody is the vivacious beauty of the Ellsworth family, while as a twenty-eight year-old spinster, elder daughter Jane is resigned to becoming an old maid. However, Jane possesses an innate talent to manipulate Glamour, the art of illusion. It's a talent that bemuses Melody, since many of her suitors seem more impressed with Jane's ability than Melody's beauty.
In Jane's world magic – albeit of a very limited kind – works, but is employed almost solely for the entertainment of the rich. Jane is able to shine sunlight on bookcase shelves, to make her sister truly beautiful in paintings, and even to create tableaux in the style of classical scenes.
Beauty and the Beast
Jane meets Mister Vincent, a brutish looking but talented glamourist in the employ of Lady FitzCameron. Mr. Vincent responds to Jane's initial pleasantries with rudeness, and persists in perceiving her interest in his art as a challenge. Jane finds herself manipulated into performing a series of tableaux for Lady FitzCameron, including one based on the legend of Beauty and the Beast – but using glamour is so debilitating that Mr. Vincent collapses with exhaustion, and only Jane's prompt action saves his life.
Recovering from her ordeal, Jane shelters in a quiet room, only to hear her sister in intimate conversation with a man supposedly involved elsewhere. As Jane's affections turn increasingly toward Mr. Vincent, so Mr. Dunkirk begins to take an interest in her, while Melody's frustrations with her dowdy sister grow with each day. Then one night Jane hears Melody making an assignation....
Shades of Milk and Honey
Shades of Milk and Honey is wonderfully sedate, and most of the dialogue has an authentic ring to it. The glamour is an aspect of magic that feels very intimate, unlike many fantasies, which are big and brash but ultimately hollow. Some readers may have found the ending a little disappointing; Mr. Dunkirk and his sister are left as loose ends, and while for the most part the novel proceeds at a langourous pace, towards the end Kowal rather rushes to a conclusion, something made more noticeable by the novel's comparative stateliness up to then.
Mary Robinette Kowal's debut is undoubtedly the pick of the steady stream of Austen-associated novels that have appeared in the last few years, and Shades of Milk and Honey is a charming way to mark the bi-centenary of Jane Austen's own emergence as a novelist.
Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal's first professional sale was to Strange Horizons in January 2006, and she made three more sales in the same year. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 2007, and in 2009 was a Hugo Nominee for her short story "Evil Robot Monkey." Her short fiction has appeared in several of the The Year's Best collections, and a selection was collected in Scenting the Dark and Other Stories (Subterranean Press, 2009). A sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, is due in 2011.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
