Modern Austen???
Sep. 8th, 2014 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearIt took me a month to read the last book I reviewed, and four days to read this next one.
At the quiz on Thursday night, Corone mentioned that people were writing modern-day versions of all six completed Austen novels. My first reaction was outrage, but I quickly reasoned - why not? My favourite Austen adaptation is Clueless, after all, and I love 10 Things I Hate About You as well (The Taming of the Shrew set in an American high school), not to mention The Lizzie Bennett Diaries and Emma Approved. So, why not update the novels in book form?
Then I read Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid over the weekend, and I'm really not convinced.
It was somehow too different and yet also not different enough.
The switch from satirising gothic novels to satirising vampire romance was clever, I'll grant you, and it zipped along pleasantly enough. But - the modern setting somehow made some of the characters seem even more like caricatures, and the transgressions of the heroine in her flights of fancy seem even more reprehensible and ridiculous. Plus, the plot was too similar to the original to be interesting, and some of the passages that kept very closely to the original felt stilted and unrealistic.
Plus, without the period interest and wonderful language, it's just fairly average chick lit...
I will certainly read all the others, though, since they're all by different people, and I'll be interested to see what other writers do with the stories.
At the quiz on Thursday night, Corone mentioned that people were writing modern-day versions of all six completed Austen novels. My first reaction was outrage, but I quickly reasoned - why not? My favourite Austen adaptation is Clueless, after all, and I love 10 Things I Hate About You as well (The Taming of the Shrew set in an American high school), not to mention The Lizzie Bennett Diaries and Emma Approved. So, why not update the novels in book form?
Then I read Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid over the weekend, and I'm really not convinced.
It was somehow too different and yet also not different enough.
The switch from satirising gothic novels to satirising vampire romance was clever, I'll grant you, and it zipped along pleasantly enough. But - the modern setting somehow made some of the characters seem even more like caricatures, and the transgressions of the heroine in her flights of fancy seem even more reprehensible and ridiculous. Plus, the plot was too similar to the original to be interesting, and some of the passages that kept very closely to the original felt stilted and unrealistic.
Plus, without the period interest and wonderful language, it's just fairly average chick lit...
I will certainly read all the others, though, since they're all by different people, and I'll be interested to see what other writers do with the stories.
