An absolute delight. A great and compelling insight into life below stairs in early 19th century England. A fitting tribute to Pride and Prejudice told from the servants perspective that Jane Austen would most certainly approve of. I absolutely loved this page turner and can't recommend it enough - go out a buy a copy today!!!!!!

I was a little wary of this book as a fan of Pride and Prejudice, but I was really pleased I read it. It is written from the point of view of the servants in the Jane Austen classic, weaving events from the original book into the servants' stories, and showing how these impact on the lives of everyone, no matter their station. The daily lives and chores of the servants are described brilliantly, revealing the hardships and pain involved and the constraints of the time. However, it also reveals the hopes and dreams of the servants, which are very similar to those of their masters and mistresses. This is a great read, and sure to become a companion volume to the classic. I recommend this to all fans of Pride and Prejudice.

This is Baker's attempt at telling us the servants side of Longbourn, and what a good attempt it is. She has clearly done her research well and painted a clear picture of what the other side of Longbourn would have looked like.

This book has already been given a fair amount of hype, and with a film already in the pipeline it is bound to do very well. It is not really a new concept, to expand upon an existing story by shifting the focus to another view point, but Jo Baker, for the most part, does it very well. In the original Pride and Prejudice the only member of staff who really gets a mention is Mrs Hill, and even then she really only exists for Mrs Bennet to squawk at. However there would obviously have been a number of housemaids, footmen etc working away in the background to ensure that everything went smoothly for the familly, this story expands upon their role rather well. Housemaid Sarah, for example, has a few choice things she could say about Miss Lizzie's traipsing about the countryside throught the mud, as it is poor Sarah who is responsible for cleaning the inch of mud from Lizzie's petticoats. We do maybe hear a little too much about the maids having to clean out the monthly cloths for the Bennet sisters and I am guessing that this thought was one which stuck the author as being particularly disgusting when she imagined the life of a maid at Longbourn. The story focuses mainly on Sarah and on a footman, James; and they are given their own love story to act out, with the main action of the original nivel being largely incidental, as I'm sure it would have been, to the lives of the staff. The relationship between Mrs Hill and Mr Bennet was one which I thought was maybe a little overdone at times, but it did add further depth to the story as well as pathos when the Lydia situation came to a head. The section following James during the Peninsular War made me cringe just a little, and was not a high point of this novel. I think Jo Baker did far better at imagining the life of domestic staff in the villages of England, than she did with the lives of troops of the early 1800's; this section did tend to read like something written by someone who had done all their research from watching Sean Bean in Sharpe. However, that criticism aside, the whole work hangs together well, has some well drawn characters and may even give some added depth to future readings of the original novel.

If you are buying this book because you want a re-telling of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants then you should still buy this book, but set that expectation to one side. This book touches on the key events from Pride and Prejudice, but only those that have a key effect on the main characters of this one - the servants. This is not a re working of Pride and Prejudice from another point of view but is instead a stand alone story about the world that is not really addressed in the book. The characters of the servants are well developed and their relationships, both amongst themselves and with the Bennet family are complex and intriguing. The daily toil that occurs behind the scenes in Pride and Prejudice is brought vividly to life through the servants, and their hopes and dreams are brought out. There are links to key events in the book, but they are taken from the point of view of the servants and take on new meaning through their eyes; the visit of Mr Collins is portrayed particularly well in this respect, as is Mr Wickham. There are some surprises along the way linked in to key characters which cause you to think twice about how you view the original story, but on the whole the servants lives dominate. You feel the pain of their daily toils, their security in their jobs but also the yearning to have their own lives. As the elder Bennet girls rise in the world you also get a glimpse of what it is like in a larger, more affluent household. The beauty of this story lies in the romances that occur below stairs – although not on the grand scale of what is achieved by the elder Bennet girls there is a quieter Pride and Prejudice moment going on below stairs.