Me and Mr Darcy (Alexandra Potter)*

It’s every girl’s dream.

Usually, when I read a book about ‘every girl’s dream’, I find one of my nightmares. But this one I can relate to. Meeting Mr Darcy… Mr Darcy falling in love with me… I’ve had lots of daydreams about that. Some of them were probably not unlike what happens to Emily in this book.

But somehow, a dream I’ve had in my head doesn’t look so good now Alexandra Potter has put down on paper. Of course Mr Darcy wouldn’t really do all the things I dreamed him doing. The most I could get out of him is a dance at the ball – if I was lucky. But the idea that Mr Darcy might come tapping on Emily’s window to invite her for a midnight ride, and then stop in the middle of nowhere to have a romantic picnic – no. It would never cross his mind. Even a modern-day Mr Darcy wouldn’t try something as potentially dodgy as that. And a modern day Elizabeth Bennet wouldn’t be stupid enough to go.

It’s quite difficult to believe that Mr Darcy would be attracted to Emily in the first place. She’s terminally stupid. She smokes dope to look cool. If she was a teenager behind the bike sheds, I might forgive her, just, but she’s an adult woman on a Jane Austen book tour. She should know better.

The book tour does sound quite fun, but Emily doesn’t seem overly committed to it. Either she’s hungover, or she’s exhausted, or she wanders away from her group. She’s not the sort of person I’d expect to enjoy Jane Austen’s novels – it’s a miracle she can read at all.

Clearly, Alexandra Potter sees Emily as a sort of futuristic Elizabeth Bennet. Maybe the book would have been more successful if Emily’s comparisons of herself with Elizabeth hadn’t been so widely off the mark as to be laughable. But Mr Darcy’s affection for Emily can only suggest Potter is taking it seriously. It’s true that many of Emily’s misadventures bear a striking similarity to some of the things that happen to Elizabeth. Perhaps I’m a snob, but I felt hugely offended on Jane Austen’s behalf when reading Potter’s equivalent of the scene where Elizabeth hears Darcy’s early opinion of her looks. Spike (Emily’s other bloke: more about him in a minute) is talking about Emily into a mobile phone as Emily… hovers over a toilet seat, urinating.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Jane Austen heroines don’t go to the toilet!

Spike is the other Mr Darcy character. He is also on the tour, albeit as a journalist rather than an Austen fan. He and Emily completely fail to hit it off. The ‘relationship’ if it can be termed that (they sneer at one another rather than actually conversing) is far more convincing and interesting than Emily’s relationship with Mr Darcy. In many ways, it is also closer to the original Elizabeth and Darcy relationship, as there is a lot of pride and prejudice going on. Emily and Spike are significantly less intelligent versions of Elizabeth and Darcy, but, although you can’t help feeling that Spike could do a lot better, some of their altercations are very entertaining. And you have to love Spike for telling Emily what a stupid cow she is. Go Spike!

Me and Mr Darcy is not without strong points, but Potter really tries to do too much at once. Clueless, a modern cinema remake of Emma, also features less intelligent characters, but is still extremely enjoyable and successful. Clueless is Emma – but the characters don’t know it’s Emma. The writers don’t ram it down your throat. Me and Mr Darcy would be more successful if Emily wasn’t comparing her situation to Elizabeth Bennet’s every five minutes. The Pride and Prejudice connections would probably have been funnier if the readers had been left to work them out for themselves.

It’s not as though the Mr Darcy sections really achieved something. Emily doesn’t learn anything about herself through her encounters with him. True, she does make a few decisions about what she wants from life, but she seems to have got those ideas from Spike. And there’s no point in putting Mr Darcy in a book if he’s not going to behave like Mr Darcy.

Mr Darcy is every girl’s dream – and that’s how he should stay.