New time travel novels keep pouring into our books database here at Time Travel Nexus, like sands through an hour glass. Digging through the new releases, I’ve uncovered plenty of fine ideas, from time waves to enchanted lockets—but fine writing is more elusive. Occasionally I’ll unearth into a snappy gem like The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time or Time Bangers, and once in a blue moon a true beauty like The Time Traveler’s Wife surfaces. Perhaps that explains the luxurious sensation I felt sinking into the pages of The Jane Austen Project—rather like sprawling out on a comfortable ottoman. In this debut novel by New York Times editor Kathleen A. Flynn, two time travelers from the future, Rachel and Liam, are sent back to Regency England in order to meet Jane Austen so they can a) recover a lost novel, The Waltons, and b) figure out what she died of. Make ready the carriage and six, please!
Lady and Gentleman
In the indeterminate future from which they come, Rachel is a doctor and Liam an actor. Sent back in time via wormhole by a secret government agency, the pair originally appear in Leatherhead, Surrey, in 1815, whereupon they take up the identity of Mr. and Miss Ravenswood, a brother and sister who have recently sold their family’s plantation in Jamaica. Flynn’s writing evokes the strangeness of the world awaiting our time travelers in the past:
Wind rattled the leaves, counterpoint to a repetitive squeak that might have been some insect long extinct in my own time. I marveled at the 1815 air, moist and dense with smells I had no words for, reminded of the glass-domed habitat re-creations at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where we used to go on field trips. Once, children, the whole world was like this.
But once the newness of the 19th century has worn off and Rachel and Liam set up shop in London, we find ourselves more or less in a novel of manners. A letter purporting to know a distant relative of the Austens in Jamaica earns Liam an interview with Henry Austen, Jane’s favorite brother; and soon enough Rachel is having tea in the rather imposing company of Jane herself:
“Please,” she said. “Sit down. So good of you to come.” Her voice was husky, as if she were getting a cold, with a drollness that seemed to give her commonplace words an extra spin. Liam and I sat as abruptly as marionettes, and a longer silence ensued.
Henry came to the rescue. “My sister has been here just these few days. I was not fit to go out, or we should have called upon you before now, Miss Ravenswood, as I promised. I regret the omission.”
Jane Austen smiled at her brother. “You need not apologize. One would think, to hear you, that they are come to town with no other design than to meet me.”
The scenes of polite social interaction that follow might have come from the pages of Emma. Indeed, Flynn seems so preoccupied with Jane Austen that she seldom allows her characters the luxury of exploring the rest of the time period. While not waiting for Jane to call or dealing with servant issues, Rachel and Liam might have nipped out to catch a glimpse of Byron (who had not yet gone into exile) or Keats (then a medical student). But perhaps they did not wish to tempt the probability field too much (more on that later). What is interesting here is the genteel interactions with the Austens and their set contrasted with Rachel’s inner thoughts and dialogue with Liam. Although there are references to a great die-off and advanced technologies in their future, the pair talk and think more or less like they belong in 2017:
I’ve been intrigued, in lust, craved unsuitable men, been bored by the attentions of differently unsuitable men, had sex as often as I could. Silly crushes, torrid affairs, tedious boyfriends, and close male friends, with and without benefits: elements that never coalesced.
Both Liam and Henry Austen might fit into one or the other of the above categories. But as their mission continues, romantic feelings arise in several bosoms, and Rachel begins to feel less like an imposter—as if her real life was in 1815, as Mary Ravenswood, and her life in the future a passing dream. It’s something, Liam reminds her, that often happens to actors. Meanwhile their plan to attach themselves to Jane is trotting along a little too smoothly to be believed—at least in the beginning.
Jane Austen and … Time Travel?
Some time travel aficionados will doubtless run screaming from the drawing room before our characters take their first sip of Constantia. But for sci-fi geeks like myself who also happened to enjoy Pride and Prejudice, The Jane Austen Project has some interesting technological ideas tucked within its tidy pages. Travel to the past is accomplished by going through wormholes, which seem to appear naturally and can be predicted by the Prometheus Server, a prodigious super-computer developed by the Brits (or Old British, as they are termed here). A wormhole to return to the future will occur briefly in the same spot in 1816, which Rachel refers to as the “Opportunity of Return.” Miss it, and she and Liam are stuck in the 19th century with Jane for the rest of their lives. Oh dear!
But in case they do return to the future, it might not be the same future they left, because of something Rachel calls a “probability field.” She and Liam are pretty sure that saving a chimney sweep boy and making him their servant will not change the course of history and create a different future, but a nagging doubt remains, and we begin to agree with the opening line of the book: “What kind of maniac travels in time?” If the probability field is in fact disturbed by their actions, Flynn doesn’t make it clear whether an alternate universe is spawned (the multi-verse approach to time travel), though there is mention of different “versions” of reality. In one section we are told that any change (a new Jane Austen novel, say) would just pop up out of the blue at some point in time after the time travelers’ departure, and people simply adapt to a new reality. This suggests a single universe that is subject to rewriting (one would assume that atoms just shift their positions, etc.).
While they might come off as a little flaky to hard science fiction readers, I found the time travel aspect of The Jane Austen Project imaginative and smart. Of course the real function of Flynn’s time machine, as is the case in most other time travel novels, is pure wish fulfillment. How marvelous it would be to go back and talk to Jane Austen! And maybe get ahold of an unpublished novel while you’re at it…
Living in the Past
The Jane Austen Project has, like the novels of Jane Austen herself, a fairly narrow scope with emotionally charged characters, and a theme that is more or less timeless. Jane hints at it while remembering her youth, telling Rachel: “But one cannot live in the past. Nor would I want to. I sometimes feel the most interesting part of my life has started only now.”
But for Rachel, the journey into the past is partly an escape from a transient life filled with brief and unfulfilling relationships. As 1815 becomes more real and her own era fades in her thoughts, she’s tempted to stay in the Jane Austen world of carriages, servants and marriage proposals—even if it means giving up a lot of the freedoms possessed by women of the future.
Flynn treats this dilemma—and, really most of the book—with a deadly seriousness that instills the novel with a sense of weltschmertz at times. Jane Austen herself steered clear of melancholy with the ebullient wit and color of her characters; without a Mr. Collins or Mr. Darcy, The Jane Austen Project seems rather flat by contrast. Still, Jane Austen devotees will enjoy the novel for the way it brings the author and her family to life. And time travel devotees willing to take this rather stately ride into the past will be rewarded by some surprisingly inventive concepts and plot turns. Being both, I was charmed by The Jane Austen Project from its first curtsy; I count it among the finest time travel novels to appear in recent years.
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