How to Mend a Broken Heart by lsparsons

Blurb: A family tragedy calls Elizabeth Bennet home after Darcy’s proposal at Hunsford but before Darcy can deliver his letter. It is not until three years later that they meet again and after Darcy has just announced his engagement to another woman.

Sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it? This story belongs to the fairly common genre known as The Bennets Have Secret (Or Merely Unmentioned) Aristocratic Relatives (or Connections) Who Are Way Better Than You Fitzwilliam Darcy So There You’ll Be Sorry. It also belongs to a cousin of that genre — indeed the two are frequently observed together — entitled The Author Kills Off Mr Bennet Before Hunsford Or Before Elizabeth Visits Pemberley So As To Make the Plot More Brontean. And, in an amazing feat of plot embellishment, it participates in the sub-genre of Oh And By The Way The Bennet Aristocratic Connections Are Also Related To The Fitzwilliams So Ha Ha.

Why you should read it: …um. You belong to a penitent religious order and you’re running out of methods of punishing yourself?

Why you might not like it: You know anything at all about human anatomy, sex, or the laws of physics. You object to non-ironic use of the word ‘bodacious’. (Historical accuracy? We don’t need no stinking historical accuracy!) You actually enjoyed any part of Pride and Prejudice.

Regency, Explicit (sex, sex and more sex; also some language), AU, at AHA(HAHAHA)

Ever wondered How to Mend a Broken Heart? The answer is, apparently, sex. And lots of it.

According to the author, “[the] first chapters may seem a bit sad or boring.” Don’t be misled by this promising beginning. It gets much worse.

In the early chapters we get exposition. Lots of exposition. We discover that this story is also sub-type 21A: Everybody Loves Elizabeth. She is the essence of Pollyanna, Mary Poppins, and Maria from The Sound of Music all rolled into one feisty and vivacious, yet humble and hard-working, package. And that’s just her eyes. Mrs Bennet suffers from paranoia and delusions. Jane marries a man twice her age. Darcy suffers from an extreme case of priapism. And he’s hung like a stallion. No, really. It says so, in Chapter 5:

Darcy knew from experience that what was so prominently displayed between his legs would either make a woman wince or stare in awe.

“But it is way too much!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

INDEED. And yet there’s even more.

The basic plot goes something like this: Mr Bennet dies. The Bennet ladies are thrown into the shrubbery, out of which they are subsequently plucked by Lady Emily Webberley, A Cousin. Lady Emily is apparently of some avian origin, as she literally “swoops” in to the rescue. Elizabeth is chosen to be her companion and lives with her until her death six weeks prior to the opening of this story. In her will, Lady Swoops-a-lot passes Elizabeth on to her BFF Lady Suzan (yes, really), wife of the Earl of Matlock and mother of one Col Fitzwilliam. Lady Suzan is soon planning Elizabeth’s presentation at Court while trying to determine her OTP. During all this excitement and things-that-make-no-sense, Elizabeth Harbours A Terrible Secret. By day she is a veritable Disney Princess heroine, complete with animated hair, but by night she is Saint Elizabeth the Unmarriageable, intent on martyring herself upon the alter of spinsterhood for the benefit of her stupid mother and lazy sisters.

Meanwhile, Darcy has engaged himself to the widow of one of his childhood friends because her enormous breasts made him insensible with lust. When Elizabeth returns to his life he discovers that True Love has rendered the aforementioned breasts powerless. (Alas!)  He is thus stricken with fear that his betrothed might suspect his penis heart belongs to another. And yet he can’t break the engagement because… uh…

Now, he no longer felt that envy, only concern that he would not be able to have intimate relations with his future wife without dredging up a memory of the only woman he loved or would ever love. He did not love Virginia. He never would, but the fact that he sat in the carriage with his member hard and throbbing because of a memory of a lost love did not bode well for his future marital felicity, even though the view he had of his present fiancée’s bosom had helped in obtaining his arousal.

So that,

If (breasts = Elizabeth)
     Condition = BONERZ
else
     Condition = no BONERZ

See?

Bingley becomes a man at the hands (and other body parts) of a prostitute, marries Georgiana Darcy, and names his penis Bing. Virginia Wagstaff turns out to be a manipulative nymphomaniac who may or may not be bisexual but who certainly likes sex and is slutty and therefore bad. Elizabeth turns out to have nipples the size of grapes. Darcy is a closet nudist who masturbates in public. He also entertains creepy thoughts about his sister having sex and talks to his penis (not at the same time, for which we are all exceedingly grateful). Caroline Bingley says, “NOOOOO!” Twice. Elizabeth offers herself to Darcy as his mistress. Wickham faints. Everyone has a lot of sex. Elizabeth and Darcy get married eventually I think. I don’t know, it was all pretty hazy by that point.

There. Now you don’t have to read it. You’re welcome.

While the writing is not wholly bad, it’s not very good, either. Pronouns and verbs wobble around in confusion, not knowing quite where or when they belong. By Chapter 7 everybody is out of character. There are more hijinks and machinations than even Shakespeare himself could pull off.

Masculinity is very problematically correlated with how often one has sex (penetrative, with a woman, natch), the size of one’s penis, and the distance one can shoot one’s semen when masturbating outdoors. Romantic and/or sexual relationships between women only occur between evil, slutty characters and require a separate warning, in red. The incidences of sex and masturbation are farcical, absurd, and somehow boring. There is no emotional or physical connection that is not immediately and gratuitously sexual.

But fear not, O Gentle Reader! For despite the absolute, mind-numbing dreadfulness of this story, it is on occasion exceedingly, albeit inadvertently, amusing.

Holding up the buttoned side with one hand, he reached down and lifted his entire genitalia from the confines of his trousers.

I cannot be the only one who starts singing Detachable Penis by King Missile at this point.

It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that I award How to Mend a Broken Heart one quill.