(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)
A creatively outrageous premise is nothing new in storytelling; the very best narratives in the hands of masterful writers thrive on them and well executed, they can elevate a story in a trope-heavy genre into something magically alive and vivaciously original.
Case very much in point is The Austen Affair by Madeline Bell, a rom-com that revolves around the two romantic leads in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey being flung back two hundred years into the actual Regency era, the contextual heart of the beloved English’s author six novels.
It’s a magically real premise that, like many an instigating incident in a time travel story, is gloriously and wondrously fanciful but which absolutely work to swoon-worthy effect because Bell executes on her premise so brilliantly, right from the start.
For a start, she takes her time at the start of the novel setting up who the two key characters are and why the idea of them being flung back in time by an electrical accident in the craft services area is such a terrible thing … initially at least.
American Tess Bright is one half of the acting duo, and the Austen adaptation is her last chance to rescue an ailing acting career, one that was thriving, in a way, in a TV series until some personal trauma caused her to lose focus, dedication and ultimately her job.
She hasn’t got a whole lot else going on in her impulsive, messy, if goodhearted, usually people-oriented life.
I try my best to shove my qualms aside and agree with him. This must be what the universe wants. ‘I guess … what’s the point of being mistaken for your dead great-great-great-great-uncle and heir of the estate if you can’t use any of the considerable yearly income to solve a time-travel emergency?’
Hugh Balfour, by way of method acting contrast, is a classical trained British actor with a supposed forest of sticks up his proverbial, refusing to run lines with Tess or to put much effort into stoking the chemistry needed to make the relationship between Northanger Abbey’s slow-burning lovebirds, Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney feel real and authentic and for it to burst off the screen in all its rom-com glory.
The two are not getting along well in The Austen Affair when the inciting incident occurs, and one reason the novel works so well is that Bell does an exemplary job of establishing Tess and Hugh as the first part of the enemies-to-lovers trope that the idea of them being sent back to the very era they’re supposed to be bringing back to life with their acting is not only audacious but a horrifying development for two people who most definitely do not want to be stuck so far from home with only each other to lean on.
Some two hundred hours in fact, a space of time that delights Tess, an Austen enthusiast who shared a deep and abiding love of the author with her mother, and who can’t believe she gets to experience a world she has only ever known on paper, and dismays Hugh who is close to his family and distressed that he may not be present for a pivotal moment with his father.
Whatever their reactions to their strange predicament, they need to get home and so begins an adventurous romp through 1815 Hampshire, England which, as you might expect in a rom-com, sends the home-seeking twosome on a path to love every bit as much as sleuthing a route back to the modern-day world.
The other key thing that Bell gets wondrously right is that she makes their journey to being lovers rather than enemies feel as authentic as it can be under extraordinary circumstances.
There is still latent antagonism sure in the their first hours and days in 1815 but because they only have each other in an era of strict morality and draconian social opprobrium were such strict moral codes to be breached in even the slightest way, they have no choice, prickliness aside, to be each other’s support, sounding board and co-conspirators to finding a way home.
Thankfully as a lifelong Austen enthusiast and dedicated method actor respectively, Tess and Hugo mostly pull off being typical citizens of the Regency era, and while there are some recoverable clangers, with some 21st century sensibilities making their presence awkwardly felt, with people including, rather marvellously with Austen herself, they mostly succeed in blending in.
Working and living so closely together – how they manage this in an era where single men and women are not supposed to mix too closely without chaperones and certainly not alone in any place, public or private is beautifully realised – they begin to discover that maybe their assumptions about each other are horribly flawed and that perhaps the other might just be the one they need, not just to get back to the present day but when they somehow miraculously get back their too.
‘We might not be here much longer,’ he says, the ghost of a smile dancing about his mouth. ‘ If the machine works, we’ll be going home when it arrives. We should every do everything Austen would want of us in the meantime.’
I place a thoughtful hand to my mouth. ‘And pray tell, what is that?’
Hugh offers me his arm, and I link mine through it. ‘ I think we should host a ball.’
Rather wonderfully then The Austen Affair is not just a love letter to Austen, her clever and engrossing funny and heartfelt novels and their pithy, incisive commentary on Regency England, but also the very love story that sat at the heart of the novels and which make them so escapistly delightful for so many people to read.
In a way Tess and Hugh do cross a significant social divide but it’s one borne of occupation and outlook more than anything and much of the fun of The Austen Affair is reading about how two very different people – one wildly, messily impulsive who happily improvs her way through life and the other devoted to order and careful steps undertaken soberly in every life situation – find themselves in love with each other when all indications back in the present day are that they never would.
But this is a time travelling rom-com set in Regency England and so the roadblocks of 2025 simply don’t exist, or aren’t important enough to supplant the very pressing need to get home, and so Tess and Hugh find each other in a charmingly witty and audaciously vivacious story that serves up some deep love for Jane Austen, even deeper appreciation of the often unseen pain and trauma that people hide and which guides how they interact with each other and the best love of all as two people who might otherwise never have surmounted who they are find each other, true love and maybe even a way back home.