Recommendations: Week of 8/19/24

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (just kidding)

I used to be extraordinarily skeptical of the whole concept of writing up new versions of old stories. Why not just read the original! No one reads the original anymore! Fairy tales, ok that’s fine those are archetypal stories with very little character development. Shakespeare… ok maybe yeah that’s fine, those are all plays and a novelization could be interesting and the plays are often set in unique time periods or settings to bring out different aspects of the text… but that’s it. No Austen, no Bronte, no Ulysses but he’s actually a Brexiteer plumber in North Wales or something.

But the more I read, and especially the more I read genre fiction like mystery or romance, the more often I run across some creative versions of classic stories that feel worth reading as novels in their own right. Sometimes books that take a classic novel and build upon it just cannot stand on their own two legs (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I am looking squarely at you, you unfortunately successful cash grab). But the ones I want to highlight below would be lovely novels even without the underlying inspiration and are respectful, creative additions to this concept. Most of all, they use their underlying stories to highlight the universality of our classic stories.

Emma of 8rd Street by Audrey Belezza and Emily Harding (Gallery Books): Based on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, this novel updates the narrative to modern-day New York City. In this telling, Emma is a twenty-something socialite who has somewhat failed to launch. She lives at home with her aging father while dreaming about living a more independent life. Her best friend and neighbor (and brother-in-law), George Knightley has been a steadying (and a little annoying) presence in her life since she was little, but his continual pushing for her to get serious about her life is starting to get to her; or maybe it’s just him that’s starting to get to her.

The original Emma is a book shaped by the things that confine women into circumscribed roles and locations. Emma’s failure to launch in the original is more narrowly about her disinterest in marrying and leaving her home and father, as she is wealthy enough not to need to marry (she is the only Austen heroine who can claim this). In this update, because the societal pressures of marriage and filial duty are less pressing, it allows the authors to expand Emma’s horizons and make her coming of age multifaceted. She has many more opportunities to choose, as it were. Watching her take charge of her own life and make thoughtful, conscious choices about what she wants that life to include is a true joy. And George Knightley is very sexy.

Elizabeth of East Hampton by Audrey Belezza and Emily Harding (Gallery Books): Belezza and Harding are doing all the Austens, to my delight, and they have chosen Pride and Prejudice for their most recent novel. This novel is also set in New York, this time on Long Island, and features George Knightley as a side character and friend to hero Will Darcy. Belezza and Harding are taking advantage of a common romance series trope and loosely interconnecting these novels so they all take place in the same universe and we can see characters from other stories pop up here and there, which is actually completely believable about the original novels, as the wealthier characters in each novel would have almost certainly been aware of each other. George Knightley, Charles Bingley, and Will Darcy all being wealthy Manhattan bachelors makes a lot of sense as a modern American analogue to Austen’s late 18th/early 19th century England. What is even more interesting, however, is the way the Bennet family is portrayed. In Pride and Prejudice they are upper middle class. In this version, they are a firmly middle class family that own a bakery on Long Island. This bakery is always on the edge of collapse and much of the tension in the novel comes from Elizabeth’s constant worry that her family will end up destitute. This is a distinct change from the way the novel portrays the Bennet family (in the novel they are the wealthiest family in their area, even though their wealth is nothing compared to Bingley or Darcy). But I like this change. It reflects modern socioeconomic stratification a lot better than if they made Mr. Bennet a small-town doctor or lawyer with a modest McMansion. Elizabeth’s limitations are made clearer to modern audiences here, too. She feels the need to keep their business afloat, rather than just the need to keep Kitty and Lydia from running after officers, like in the original novel.

Also, and hold on to your hats here, Darcy is a blonde surfer. Elizabeth is a redhead and also a surfer! It takes a lot for me to bow my head and admit that I’m reading the work of a true master, but anyone who can make me believe that Fitzwilliam Darcy is a blonde deserves that title. This is a delightful novel; please read everything in this series!

Jane & Edward by Melodie Edwards (Berkley): Jane Eyre remains my favorite novel of all time, if I’m pressed for an answer. It’s also not something many people have tried to do anything the slightest bit creative with. The two most interesting reimaginings of Jane Eyre are The Eyre Affair by Japer Fforde, which is a weird little book set in a world where you can accidentally fall into the worlds of novels (highly recommend), and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Rebecca remains one of the great reimaginings of our time and I adore it. It leans heavily into the darkness and the gothic aspects of Jane Eyre and over time, many have come to view Eyre as somewhat synonymous with Rebecca in the vibes department. Which is unfortunate, because Jane Eyre is also very dry, very funny, very overtly religious, and very concerned with the scientific wonder of the natural world. It contains many multitudes and I was very happy to see Jane & Edward explore some of those beyond just the lugubrious vibes. In this reimagining Jane is an orphan trying to get by on her own who has pulled herself slightly up in the world by taking a secretarial training course. She is placed at a large law firm in Montreal and assigned to work for Edward Rosen, the majority stakeholder of Rosen, Haythe & Thornfield LLP. He is notoriously difficult and fires secretaries left and right, but Jane is brave and steady and over time, they come to respect and care for each other.

The author worked in the legal world of Montreal and brings a real grounded sense to that side of the book. Taking the setting and changing it so extremely, as Belezza and Harding have done for their Austen series, gives the reader a fresh perspective. The bottom line is, I hope you read Jane Eyre and every Austen novel, but I also hope that you check out these riffs on a theme. They are a fun, heartfelt way to pay homage to the stories that shaped us.