Longbourn by Jo Baker

A novel whose principal characters are the servants in Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice.

Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants' hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

The servants of the Bennet household have a pretty good idea what's going on upstairs, but they don't have time for that crap. They're busy laundering away menstrual blood, disposing of human and animal waste, picking at their blisters, and slogging through mud. Also having love triangles while trying not to get caught at fireable offenses.

Longbourn is quite enjoyable until two thirds of the way through, when it takes a flashback break. It could have conveyed the information by other means, but instead we get mood whiplash. Lots of childbirth (trigger warning!), war atrocities, torture, starvation, and injustice. I would have skipped past it but that's tricky with audiobooks.

This book surprised me. I expected it to be an interesting Downton Abbey-like story of gentry and servants. I did not expect it to be so thoughtful about affluence, and what having it and not having it does to the people who live around it. So thought- provoking!

A character-driven fan fic that explores the lives, loves and losses of the Longbourne servants. Clever and drly witty at times.
There is a long section about one character's experience of war that I skimmed over because it doesn't really fit with the rest of the story.