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beckboo88's review against another edition
3.0
having not read the Jane Austen Emma I can't compare the two but I felt a little bored by this at times. it is a very sedate read at times. other than the occasional mention of an email or Mimi cooper you could almost forget it us supposed to be a modern day retelling.
jacki_f's review against another edition
3.0
This is a retelling of Jane Austen's book, transported to the present day. Alexander McCall Smith would seem to be the perfect person to rewrite Austen - they both share a fascination with people's behaviours and attitudes and a delight in little observations about the way that people act. The first part of this book is quite delightful, but somewhere along the way it starts to drag, though I had a hard time figuring out why that was.
One issue is that this seems to fall into a halfway zone between a faithful retelling of Emma and a story in its own right. It has an odd timelessness to it and doesn't really feel like a modern story or something that would happen now. But a greater issue is that Emma never becomes terribly likeable and her eventual love interest George Knightley has no personality whatsoever. I just didn't care about any of these people, I didn't like any of these people and I didn't believe in any of these people.
Having said that, it has its charms. McCall Smith's gentle humour and subtle moralising is present throughout and very enjoyable to read. It's a light read and interesting to see the decisions that he made on how to adapt elements of Austen's original story to our times.
One issue is that this seems to fall into a halfway zone between a faithful retelling of Emma and a story in its own right. It has an odd timelessness to it and doesn't really feel like a modern story or something that would happen now. But a greater issue is that Emma never becomes terribly likeable and her eventual love interest George Knightley has no personality whatsoever. I just didn't care about any of these people, I didn't like any of these people and I didn't believe in any of these people.
Having said that, it has its charms. McCall Smith's gentle humour and subtle moralising is present throughout and very enjoyable to read. It's a light read and interesting to see the decisions that he made on how to adapt elements of Austen's original story to our times.
essjay1's review against another edition
1.0
Definitely not his best work and will probably irritate fans of the original. This Emma seems to miss the point.
lisawreading's review against another edition
3.0
A light and fluffy retelling of the Austen classic. If you've never read Jane Austen's Emma... well, read that instead! But if you're already a fan of the original, this retelling is an amusing read, even though some elements really just don't make a whole lot of sense in a modern setting.
alison_the_librarian's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
joanna_postcards's review against another edition
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
kelseysong's review against another edition
A fun and lighthearted twist on the original :)
sheplays's review against another edition
2.0
This book is pretty boring, and there’s almost no Mr. Knightley to make up for it.
aethelgifu's review against another edition
1.0
Oh dear. Even though I think the concept is dreadful [Why rewrite one of the most perfect prose stylists in English? Why?] I keep trying with 'The Austen Project'. So far we've had Joanna Trollope's 'Sense and Sensibility' [I couldn't get beyond the first 50 pages], Val McDermid's 'Northanger Abbey' [which I really did like - it was a jolly romp :-) ] and now Alexander McCall Smith's much vaunted take on 'Emma'.
The first 90 pages [out of 360] are the backstory which Austen didn't give her readers, and if he'd left it at that it would have been okay, though his attempts to explain why a 21st C family needs a governess are clunky.
It's when McCall Smith bangs head on into Austen that it all goes wrong and none of the characters, as he writes them, or the plots convince
And then there's the poor vicar - I actually felt sorry for him. McCall smith keeps the 'Elton / Harriet Smith' plotline but the denouement - Emma spikes his gin, he drives drunk after her rebuttal, prangs the car, ends up in court on a drunk driving charge - is just horrible, and there seem to be no consequences for Emma at all. She doesn't even feel that guilty.
In Austen there are social and cultural reasons for Emma's pre-eminence in society, which clearly no longer apply, yet because that is the main engine of the book McCall Smith is left with a very self-centred, shallow, girl who is pretty unlikeable, to whom people appear to defer, for no apparent reason. In Austen there is a sense of her growth as a character but this is missing in McCall Smith and the 'love' interest with Knightley is jammed in at the end, almost as an after-thought, and, again, fails to convince.
Isabel Dalhousie just about works as a character in her own series of novels, but transplanting her to Norfolk and calling her Miss Taylor grates, though it does allow McCall Smith to write about his favourite city in that slightly twee way he has.
To sum up, and to quote Jane Austen: 'Badly done' :-(
The first 90 pages [out of 360] are the backstory which Austen didn't give her readers, and if he'd left it at that it would have been okay, though his attempts to explain why a 21st C family needs a governess are clunky.
It's when McCall Smith bangs head on into Austen that it all goes wrong and none of the characters, as he writes them, or the plots convince
Spoiler
e.g. the Frank Churchill / Jane Fairfax subplot - which works in Austen because of the particular mores of the time, but in McCall Smith leaves the reader yelling 'Do they not have Facebook in Norfolk??' as 30seconds on the net would have blown Frank's 'I'm gay' 'cover' story. And the least said about Emma's lesbianism, the better.And then there's the poor vicar - I actually felt sorry for him. McCall smith keeps the 'Elton / Harriet Smith' plotline but the denouement - Emma spikes his gin, he drives drunk after her rebuttal, prangs the car, ends up in court on a drunk driving charge - is just horrible, and there seem to be no consequences for Emma at all. She doesn't even feel that guilty.
In Austen there are social and cultural reasons for Emma's pre-eminence in society, which clearly no longer apply, yet because that is the main engine of the book McCall Smith is left with a very self-centred, shallow, girl who is pretty unlikeable, to whom people appear to defer, for no apparent reason. In Austen there is a sense of her growth as a character but this is missing in McCall Smith and the 'love' interest with Knightley is jammed in at the end, almost as an after-thought, and, again, fails to convince.
Isabel Dalhousie just about works as a character in her own series of novels, but transplanting her to Norfolk and calling her Miss Taylor grates, though it does allow McCall Smith to write about his favourite city in that slightly twee way he has.
To sum up, and to quote Jane Austen: 'Badly done' :-(