This book was my first venture into The Austen Project, where 6 current authors have been tasked with updating Jane Austen’s most famous novels. This is actually the second part of the project, with Sense and Sensibility being published by Joanne Trollope first, but this is just the one I grabbed in the supermarket to read!
I’m a great fan of Austen, but in all honesty, I’ve only read two of her books: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The rest are on my bookshelf and to-read list! But I’ve seen TV and/or film adaptations of them all, and love the stories that she writes.
The premise of the original is a girl who loves Gothic fiction and gets this a bit twisted with reality, being invited to join family friends in Bath for the season, and then making friends with people who live in Northanger Abbey, which sounds like something out of one of her books…. and I won’t spoil it with further details.
But that’s Austen, and this is someone else! For the most part I really enjoyed this book. In this edition, we have a home schooled girl who is into vampire novels, and her neighbours offer to take her to the Edinburgh Festival, and the plot follows similarly, we end up visiting Northanger Abbey and wondering what secrets lie within.
I think on the whole the updating of the book worked really well (although, as with any of these re-writes, it wouldn’t be anything without the story it was based on of course). That said, some bits really irritated me. There was a little too much mention of facebook, twitter, phone apps, and trying to get on the WiFi. Yes, this is a modern book, but it was a little too frequent and distracted from what was going on. Similarly some references to the Twilight series, which I worry might not be long term enough to last in this.
But what really bothered me, was references to other Jane Austen books she’d read. I think that if you’re going to write a Jane Austen based novel, you should probably assume the characters don’t know about the other ones – it’s not like the original novels references each other! Maybe I’m just being picky, but it bothered me when this happened!
I never realised how short some of these ‘classics’ are! I am more than willing to work through a load of them at that length! Actually finished this a couple of days ago, but life’s been a bit too hectic to sit down and write it up…
This book actually made me really angry. It just represents a totally unjust society, where the leaders tell the people things are brilliant and that they’re all equal, when really, it couldn’t be more uneven. As the cover of the book says: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Sadly it really reminded me of the state of some countries in our world in this present day, I think that’s where my anger really came from. This isn’t just fiction, it’s a reality for so many.
The story is well told though, and the animal parts make it light enough that you don’t completely want to cry, but it just makes some excellent points while it does that.
Colin is 18 years old, and has just been dumped by Katherine IXX (yes that’s right, his 19th girlfriend called Katherine). There’s definitely a couple of parallels between this and The Rosie Project which I read recently – the lead character is a remarkably intelligent man, who struggles a little socially, and tries to find a way to formulate relationships. In the Rosie Project, this was by matching a vast amount of criteria. In this book, Colin is trying to find a formula to predict whether a relationship between two people would work, how long it would last, and who would be the dumper and who the dumpee.
Colin struggles with the fact that while he was a child prodigy, he hasn’t turned into a genius. He wants to be someone who matters. This leads to a lovely quote somewhere in the book: “And so we all matter – maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.”
The book actually follows Colin and his friend Hassan (who has his own issues to deal with) on a summer road trip to try and cheer Colin up, ending up in some random little town and that’s where the story unfolds.
Fairly light hearted mostly, a little confusing until I got used to the flashback stories of previous Katherines through the book, but some great stuff, including a highly mathematical appendix (starting from uber basic and building up) by an actual professor – lovely!
It’s a while since I’ve done one of these, but last week a friend of mine was raving about The Jungle Book, and I realised just how long it is since I’ve seen it!
The thing with the Jungle Book is, in general, I love it, however, there are an awful lot of characters I dislike in it, and a lot that creep me out, so I’ve put them below, and then balanced that out with a list of the characters I love!
Weirdly, Mowgli isn’t in either list… I’m a bit indifferent to him! King Louie is another that I part love, part don’t, so he doesn’t make either list.
Dislike:
Kaa – obviously! He can hypnotise, he can strangle… way too dangerous!
Shere Khan – another obvious one, he’s out to kill, ’nuff said.
The girl – maybe a bit less obvious, but she’s being all flirty with Mowgli, and luring him away from the life that he loves!
Bagheera – again, not so obvious. He’s way too strict and grumpy, doesn’t enjoy the fun things, doesn’t smile, and wants to send Mowgli away!
Colonel Hathi – another grumpus. General rule of thumb, I generally struggle with characters that don’t smile. Also big and scary.
Love:
The Wolves – the cubs are just so cute, and they looked after Mowgli instead of eating him…
Hathi Junior – adorable, you wouldn’t think he was the Colonel’s child. Fun loving, and welcomes Mowgli instantly.
The Vultures – it’s only now that I re-watch as a grown up that I realise they were based on the beatles! Four Liverpudlian singers with weird hair…! Hilarious though – these are the characters that we repeatedly quoted at Primary School!
Baloo – I just want to cuddle him and hang out – so much fun
Winifred the Elephant (Colonel Hathi’s Wife) – this woman has sass. Colonal Hathi might be terrifying, but she can still tell him what’s what, tell him what to do and he listens!
And just as an added bonus – last week that friend pointed out that in the clip below (at 1 minute in), Bagheera quotes 1 John 3v16… that slightly redeemed him in my eyes!
It also goes on to some of the good Vulture stuff 🙂
