James, Syrie (Syrie Astrahan James)

views updated

James, Syrie (Syrie Astrahan James)

PERSONAL:

Born in Poughkeepsie, NY; daughter of Morton (a computer scientist) and Joann Astrahan; married Bill James; children: Ryan, Jeff. Education: University of California, Davis, B.A. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, reading, film, theater, photography, board games, sewing, the outdoors.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Los Angeles, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

MEMBER:

Writers Guild of America, Romance Writers of America, New Playwrights Foundation, and Jane Austen Society of North America.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Applause Screenwriting Competition Winner, 2003, for Up; Scriptwriters Network Winner, 2006, for Jane.

WRITINGS:

Once in a Lifetime (screenplay), adapted from the novel of the same title by Danielle Steele, Cramer Company, 1994.

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen (novel), Avon Trade (New York, NY), 2008.

Author of numerous screenplays and teleplays, including Jane, a screenplay based on her novel The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, as well as Up, Pure Morning, and Home Fires Burning.

SIDELIGHTS:

Syrie James was a successful screenwriter, having sold screenplays and teleplays to several studios and television networks, before writing her first novel, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen. This book imagines the events of a largely undocumented period of Austen's life; they include a love affair with a man who had a strong impact on her writing. James has described herself as a longtime Austen fan; Austen's novels have remained appealing for centuries, she noted on her Web site, not only because they are well-written and witty, but because her primary subject—romantic love—is timeless.

"One day, I thought: what about a love story for Jane Austen?" James related. "Although Jane Austen's biographers portray her basically as a spinster with a great imagination, I refused to believe that!" James became curious about a gap in Austen's surviving correspondence, from January 1809 through April 1811, and a story told by Austen's sister "that the only man Jane ever truly loved was an unnamed gentleman she once met at an unspecified seaside resort." James added that she "decided to invent" this man, "a man who I believed was Jane's equal in intellect and temperament," and fill in Austen's "missing years."

The story takes the form of a journal written by Austen about those years that is discovered during the renovation of a manor house in Chawton, England, once occupied by Austen's brother Edward. It depicts Austen at a difficult time in her life: her father has just died, she has no money, and she has yet to see her work published, and for the moment she has ceased writing. She is past thirty and unmarried, and she has rejected one suitor. While on a trip with her brother Henry, she meets a wealthy, intelligent, charming aristocrat named Frederick Ashford. Jane and Frederick find they have compatible personalities and common interests. Both of them love literature, and he encourages her writing. She feels a strong attraction to him and hopes he returns her feelings. Various circumstances complicate their romance, but the relationship does inspire Jane to resume writing Sense and Sensibility, which will become her first published novel.

The "journal" is accompanied by a foreword and afterword, ostensibly the work of an Austen scholar, who is another fictional creation of James's. There are also footnotes throughout the journal, explaining various topics to which "Austen" refers.

Several critics thought James had produced an engaging re-creation of Austen and her world, embellishing the facts with fiction so convincing that it seems like fact. "This fascinating novel will make readers swear there was such a man as Mr. Ashford and that there is such a memoir," observed Bette-Lee Fox in Library Journal. Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked that "readers will anxiously root for Jane to find true love and wealth even though we know it never happened," while Kay James, reviewing for the Web site Romance Reader at Heart, related that the novel "is written so well, and stays so true to form for the historical period, that it feels uncannily like a real memoir."

Some commentators, noting the burgeoning interest in Austen in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, deemed The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen a worthwhile entry among the many works related to Austen's life and her novels. A Publishers Weekly critic found the book "a pleasant addition to the ever-expanding Austen-revisited genre," and the Kirkus Reviews contributor said it "deserves front-runner status in the saturated field of Austen fan-fiction." Elena Gray-Blanc, writing in California's Santa Barbara Independent, termed the novel "one of the best additions" to this field. She thought some Austen fans might be upset by James's fictional touches, but added: "As James said, ‘In the end, it's fun, it's fiction, it's meant to give a few hours of pleasure. In my heart, I like to believe it happened.’ And that, ultimately, is the mark of a good novel."