Eliza's Daughter

Eliza's Daughter
by Joan Aiken

A sequel to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Eliza's Daughter takes up the story of the illegitimate daughter of Colonel Brandon's ward Eliza and that dastardly cad Mr Willoughby. In keeping with the we-only-have-10-female-names standards of the times, Eliza's daughter is also named Eliza, as was Eliza's mother - something which does cause a little genealogical confusion later in the book as bloodlines start to be explained.

I tended to side with an Amazon customer reviewer who complained that it would have been a good book if Aiken had not used Sense and Sensibility as a base and just come up with her own characters. Now, much to my chagrin, I have not read the book; however, I have seen the 1994 film and thus have a basic familiarity with the characters. Much to my dismay, those who are not killed off during the course of Eliza's Daughter would be unrecognisable, were it not for their names. Marianne Dashwood is a spiteful and shrewish woman, Margaret has become foolish and quite pathetic, and a subdued Elinor is controlled by the now bitter and vindictive Edward.

The plot is quite entertaining, but suffers from continual changes of location and a high companion character turnover-rate. Many characters are introduced and then summarily killed off a few chapters later for no apparent reason. One notable example involves a character who has served no real plot purpose before her abrupt disappearance from the tale, who then returns some chapters later - still without the contribution of any plot points.

Character assassinations aside, overall the story is carried along by the independent and engaging heroine and is an entertaining read.