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Emma: A Modern Retelling

Alexander McCall Smith

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Jul 15, 2015 Book Concierge rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, books-about-books, england, literature, library, concierge, romance, friendship, contemporary-fiction, jane-austen

Audio performed by Susan Lyons

This is book 3 in the Austen Project series, wherein authors take on Austen’s classic novels, reimagining the scenarios in contemporary times. In this outing, Mini Coopers replace carriages, and cappuccinos take the place of tea, but the characters, relationships and basic scenarios remain the same.

21st century Emma is still a wealthy, exasperatingly obtuse young woman with too much time on her hands and no real job to keep her mind engaged. Harriet Smith is her fri Audio performed by Susan Lyons

This is book 3 in the Austen Project series, wherein authors take on Austen’s classic novels, reimagining the scenarios in contemporary times. In this outing, Mini Coopers replace carriages, and cappuccinos take the place of tea, but the characters, relationships and basic scenarios remain the same.

21st century Emma is still a wealthy, exasperatingly obtuse young woman with too much time on her hands and no real job to keep her mind engaged. Harriet Smith is her friend and pet project.

If you’ve read the original you’ll find yourself anticipating certain scenes – When does Emma meet Frank Churchill? When will Mr Elton get his signals crossed? When will the picnic happen? I actually found this a little distracting because I was looking forward to what might happen instead of paying attention to what was going on. That’s my failing, not the author’s.

I enjoyed this light romantic comedy, but it is not as good as the original. That is probably entirely to do with the time frame. Austen’s Emma was exasperating as she meddled in others' affairs and acted on the basis of misread social cues. However, I could understand her in the time frame of the Regency period. She was merely a product of her situation and social class; and her final realizations, however slow to come about, were all the more rewarding. But the modern Emma just has no such excuse for her superior manner. I cannot imagine how a college-educated young woman (even one from such a high social standing) would be so blind to the differences in people, and so clueless as to how snobbish she was being. I just could not like her at all.

Also, while Alexander McCall Smith included all the characters of Austen’s original – Vicar Elton, George Knightly, Isabella & John Knightly, Miss Taylor and Captain Westin, Miss Bates, Frank Churchill, and Jane Fairfax – he didn’t give them as much page time as Austen gave them. This modern Emma focused much more on the title character, and I missed those other people and their interactions.

The audio version is capably performed by Susan Lyons. She has good pacing and sufficient skill as a voice artist to differentiate the various characters. This is particularly helpful in the many scenes where two (or more) women are speaking.
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