by Val McDermid
‘General Tilney?’ She spoke with some diffidence as Mrs Calman cleared away the soup dishes and placed a selection of curries and side dishes in the middle of the table. ‘I wonder whether it might be possible for me to use your wifi?’ She caught the look of alarm shared by Henry and Ellie. ‘The w...
This contemporary retelling of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (my favourite of Austen's novels) is actually a lot of fun. Though McDermid's dialogue is not good - stiff and unfunny, a bad imitation of Austen's sharp, balanced prose style - and the concerns of Austen's teenage characters don't transl...
It's really hard to effectively update a Jane Austen story. Clueless is the only contemporary version that works for me. I enjoyed Bridget Jones, but not as Austen, just as a story that used some Austen character names. I'm also a fan of the gothic, and read way too many gothic romances in my teens,...
I read the modernized version of Sense and Sensibility earlier this year and rather enjoyed - though a good bit of that could be that the plot didn't do loop the loops and go everywhere except in a straight line. It flowed a bit better and so I couldn't' help but feel positively towards it. Having j...
What better place for an imaginative, book-besotted girl than the lively cultural joys of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival? That’s where author Val McDermid sends Catherine, aka Cat, Morland instead of Bath in this Austen Project update of Northanger Abbey. This is the second book in the series, Joann...
I would have liked to have re-familiarized myself with the source material before I read this book; one of the pleasures of adaptations is the adaptation itself, seeing all the clever ways the author changed and readjusted the situations. I loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because I was so fami...
The plot for this book is identical to the original Northanger Abbey. In fact, the book is basically just the original, modernized sentence by sentence. Surprisingly, I really liked that about it. I didn’t love the original book. I probably wouldn’t re-read the first book. Yet something about a rete...
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I'll start by saying I love Austen's Northanger Abbey. It is in my top three favourite books of hers and one I often re-read. I am always wary of re-workings of Austen novels as there have been mixed successes in t...
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