What would make a much more interesting project would be to take an author venerated in their time but difficult to read now someone should have a shot at Guillaume de Lorris. There is no need to turn a barouche into a Triumph Spitfire. But we know this already: from Lost in Austen, from the evergreen Andrew Davies BBC adaptations, from PD James's Death Comes to Pemberley, from every Romantic novelist who ever wrote about a grumpy but, happily, solvent man.Īnd simply to take the plot seems peculiar when what makes Austen so great is the voice, the insight, the feeling for humanity (this is doubly true for Northanger Abbey, which may be her funniest novel, but in plot terms isn't the most watertight). And McDermid echoes it, the message being, presumably, that in the world of practicality versus passionate love – sense and sensibility – nothing ever really changes. As an author, she has not just been done to death, she has been pounded, repeatedly and continuously, with a stick made out of a dead horse.Īusten's beautifully observed work had much to say about the marriage market, money, love and their confluence in human emotions.
People who think of McDermid as a dark, intense writer will have a much lighter, jollier time – anyone who has tried to heave their way to a bar in the Assembly Rooms in August is probably experiencing something similar to a dance at the Bath Pump Rooms in the early 19th century.īut the real question is, why? Why do it? Who's it for? The world is neck-deep in Austen knock-offs, from the sensational ( Bridget Jones's Diary, Clueless) to the lamentable ( Austenland). The book itself is perfectly diverting it follows the original plot very closely, and it is funny and brilliantly written. These aren't short stories or exercises in style they are full-length novels, months of work from busy authors at the top of their game. So instead of reading gothic romance, for example, Catherine Morland reads Twilight instead of letters brought in by maids, they post on Facebook, and so on. But this novel is a very different proposition indeed, part of The Austen Project, a series that includes Joanna Trollope's take on Sense and Sensibility, and promises to bring us Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld and Emma by Alexander McCall Smith, all with a contemporary setting.
As it's against the law to write a book about the Edinburgh festival without someone discovering a dead standup comedian bobbing about in the Water of Leith, and as McDermid excels at crime fiction, I was tempted to bolt the door and gobble the book down in one sitting. A ha! A new Val McDermid, set at the Edinburgh festival.
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