New book

Can there be a definitive checklist for the perfect man?

Author Susan Moore explores the idea in The Darcy List (Bloodhound Books, £9.99, available from Amazon).

Susan, who lives in Godalming, says the book “started with a confession – mine, and I suspect many other women's. I've spent decades measuring men against a fictional standard I absorbed as a teenager when I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. At some point I had to ask myself: is that romantic or is it a problem?

“The Darcy List is about Florence, who at sixteen sits down with her best friend Alice and writes the definitive checklist for the perfect man, inspired entirely by Mr Darcy. Tall. Devastatingly good-looking. Smart and witty. Able to gallop on a horse, though driving a cool sports car will do. They tuck it inside their copy of Pride and Prejudice and forget about it.

“Years later Florence is divorced, back in the English countryside with a rescue dog and no convincing plan for what comes next. Alice finds the old list, and it sets Florence thinking about the gap between the love story she imagined and the one that might actually be waiting for her. She buys a derelict pub in the English countryside, she renovates it from scratch, and she meets someone she absolutely didn't plan on.

“I think it will appeal to anyone who has ever loved Jane Austen and loved a man who didn't quite live up to him. In my experience, that's rather a lot of us.

“What fascinated me most was the gap between the Darcy we carry in our heads and the Darcy that Austen actually wrote. The checklist version is compelling, but it misses the point of him. His real quality is accountability: he can be told he's wrong, he believes it, and he changes. That felt like a much richer thing to write about.

“I'm aiming it at anyone who loves smart, warm, funny fiction, who has made brave decisions, had complicated relationships, and who still believes in love but is no longer prepared to accept anything less than the real thing. And of course anyone with a complicated relationship with Mr Darcy!

“The most enjoyable part of writing it was Florence's voice. She has a dry, self-deprecating wit. She narrates her own disasters with such fond exasperation that even her worst moments have warmth. I also loved writing the friendship between Florence and Alice, which is really the emotional backbone of the whole novel. And I loved the pub renovation, which gave me the chance to write about practical, unglamorous hard work, which fiction doesn't always make room for.

“It works beautifully as a standalone. Florence's story is complete. But I won't pretend I haven't thought about what happens next. There's more to say about these characters, and I rather hope there will be more books to say it in.

“I've been writing in various forms for most of my life, but The Darcy List is the book I always knew I wanted to write eventually. The Jane Austen obsession started at school and never really went away. There came a point where I thought: if I don't write this now, I never will. So I did.”

• Susan Moore, author of The Darcy List, is pictured outside The Hollist Arms in Lodsworth on the evening of her book launch. The historic free house — run by her brother and sister-in-law — provided the setting for a Regency-themed celebration that included three riders arriving on horseback as Mr Darcy, Mr Bingley and Mr Wickham.