Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl

What do you get when you mix a beautiful and determined heroine with a ruined family estate, Cinderella-worthy stepsisters and a jumble of potential suitors? The answer is: a hilarious parody of a Jane Austen novel, obviously! In her young-adult novel Keeping the Castle, author Patrice Kindl gives readers a good-humored, feathery romp with a loveable protagonist through an England that is familiar in many ways and endearingly amusing in others.

          Althea Crawley is bound and determined to catch a wealthy husband. Her family’s ancestral home, a dilapidated castle, is literally falling to pieces around their ears and her twice-widowed mother, not to mention her young brother and several servants and tenants, are looking to her to snag a plump-pocketed suitor. Delighted by the news that the handsome Lord Boring has returned to his nearby country home, she immediately directs all of her ingenuity toward charming him into a proposal. What she hasn’t reckoned on, however, is their new neighbor’s friend Mr. Fredericks, an outspoken, quirky, quarrelsome man with a terrible propensity to provoke Althea into bickering with him. Complicating this mess are Althea’s peevish stepsisters and Miss Vincy, a quiet new friend who appears to have a sad and dire secret. Althea’s solutions? To marry off everyone in the vicinity – not forgetting herself!

          What makes this book such a hoot are the many tongue-in-cheek tributes to common plot elements in 19^th-century-based British fiction. In an original twist on the theme of a young girl forced into an advantageous match, Althea is decidedly in favor of marrying for money and does all she can to meet this goal. Kindl also good-humoredly spoofs traditional English shire names in her development of setting: Althea lives in the region of Lesser Hoo, which is near Hoo-Upon-Hill, Hasty, and Little Snoring. Several of the characters’ names are also purposefully silly, including Lord Boring, the inappropriately named stepsisters Prudence and Charity, and Doctor Haxhamptonshire (pronounced Hamster). And these jokes are only the start! Readers who enjoy Jane Austen and/or a good laugh will certainly appreciate this humorous tribute to a fascinating era.