This review was original published on Indie Jane.
In Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile, Elizabeth Bennet and her family are Jewish. While Mr. Darcy is Christian. This does put an interesting spin on things. Wickham is Jewish and he maligns Mr. Darcy's character by saying that he is very prejudice against Jews. Wickham paints a very ugly picture of Mr. Darcy.
It was interesting to learn some of the reasons why Jewish people were looked down upon. Elizabeth certainly didn't like it when any bad behavior by her family or other Jews added to the prejudice of her race.
The biggest problem I have with this book is that it is practically word for word straight Jane Austen, with some Yiddish and a sprinkling of sentences added through out the story.
I read in an interview Lev Raphael gave were he said it would be a subtle difference in this version from the original, and I would say that is very correct. I could feel the prejudice against Jews through out the story especially in the beginning, but I wish he would have expanded on it a little more. To me religious conflict is harder to resolve than class conflict. Maybe that's because I live in this century and not 200 years ago when class prejudices were huge. I also don't know enough about religious prejudices of the 1800s. How big of a deal would it have been? That is a question that might have been answered with, maybe, a conversation between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, or Jane and Elizabeth.
3 out of 5 stars.
Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of the book for my honest review.
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