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3.11 AVERAGE
3.11 AVERAGE
A humorous and quirky retelling of Austen's original set in the present day.
This is a pointless and unnecessary adaptation. The first sign of trouble is that it's set in the present day, but the characters all still live at grand country estates in England, and spend their time drinking tea or popping up to London for parties.
The problem is, most of the plot points in S&S don't hold up in the present day, but little to no attempt has been made to modernise them. Money is terribly tight for the Dashwoods (what with only two hundred thousand pounds in the bank), yet it doesn't seem to occur to Mrs Dashwood that, this not being the early 1800s, she can get a job. Instead, Elinor has to drop out of university to support the family. What a horrible mother.
For some reason, inheritance is still a very big deal, as is marrying into a wealthy family. Fanny's horror at the thought of her brother Edward hooking up with the disgustingly poor Elinor (see earlier point re: only two hundred thousand pounds in the bank) just doesn't make any sense in a modern context. Perhaps most bizarrely, the book still ends with an engagement, despite the characters in question having not so much as been on a date.
Elinor drawing architectural sketches instead of portraits, Marianne playing the guitar instead of the piano, and Margaret having an iPod do not make this an interesting update of a classic story. I think I've been spoiled when it comes to Austen adaptations - the youtube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries updated Pride & Prejudice so beautifully, so cleverly, that I'm still gushing about it a couple of years after it ended. This book, on the other hand, just didn't need to be written. I gave it two stars instead of one as it would be passable reading material on the beach, by the pool, while sleep deprived on a plane, or while sick and unable to get off the couch - any time you aren't up for dealing with difficult concepts, and are ideally too sleepy to work up a rage at the use of the word "amazeballs".
The problem is, most of the plot points in S&S don't hold up in the present day, but little to no attempt has been made to modernise them. Money is terribly tight for the Dashwoods (what with only two hundred thousand pounds in the bank), yet it doesn't seem to occur to Mrs Dashwood that, this not being the early 1800s, she can get a job. Instead, Elinor has to drop out of university to support the family. What a horrible mother.
For some reason, inheritance is still a very big deal, as is marrying into a wealthy family. Fanny's horror at the thought of her brother Edward hooking up with the disgustingly poor Elinor (see earlier point re: only two hundred thousand pounds in the bank) just doesn't make any sense in a modern context. Perhaps most bizarrely, the book still ends with an engagement, despite the characters in question having not so much as been on a date.
Elinor drawing architectural sketches instead of portraits, Marianne playing the guitar instead of the piano, and Margaret having an iPod do not make this an interesting update of a classic story. I think I've been spoiled when it comes to Austen adaptations - the youtube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries updated Pride & Prejudice so beautifully, so cleverly, that I'm still gushing about it a couple of years after it ended. This book, on the other hand, just didn't need to be written. I gave it two stars instead of one as it would be passable reading material on the beach, by the pool, while sleep deprived on a plane, or while sick and unable to get off the couch - any time you aren't up for dealing with difficult concepts, and are ideally too sleepy to work up a rage at the use of the word "amazeballs".
A modern retelling of the wonderful Austen story. Marianne and Elinor are young adults - Elinor has been forced to quit uni and find a job when her money-grubbing half-sister-in-law kicks them out and tries to turn their family home into a B and B. Follows the original plot and characterisation very closely. Lots of fun.
I was so skeptical when I picked this up to read, well opened it on my kindle, but I was pleasantly surprised. The transferring of Austen to a modern setting worked well and I love the way that technology was integrated into the story. For instance, instead of Marianne being talked about around town instead her interaction with Willoughby was placed on YouTube. Yes, it's not Austen exactly but it was a brilliant rendering of a classic story. I'd highly recommend this :)
***SPOILER ALERT***:If you've read Sense and Sensibility before, no need for a spoiler warning here. But if not, you might just want to go into this one cold, and just try it. While I have problems with this kind of book, there are certainly worse books of this type around. Skip my review below though!
3.5 stars I am a big fan of Jane Austen. Generally, I am not a fan of sequels or prequels written by someone other than the original author This yea do I go in for fanfiction. I read Longbourn earlier this year (one of my favorite books of the year), and also one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year as well. I had heard about the Harper Collins Austen Project, and when I saw this on Vine, i decided to take a chance. I have never read anything else by Trollope, so I was taking a chance, since I don't think her fiction is in line with my normal reading habits.
I re-read an Austen every year, and coincidentally, Sense and Sensibility was this year's. So the original was fresh in my mind. The reluctance on Trollope's part to deviate from the original story was disconcerting. I read Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy last year, a riff on Jane Eyre, and while the story was most certainly reflective of Jane Eyre, Livesey manages to make it very much her own story, as well as Gemma's. Trollope sticks very closely to Austen's plot and characters, which for me, with the contemporary setting, was a problem for me.
The plot is identical to Austen's: the Dashwood family (mother and three daughters) are forced out of their comfortable home by Isabel's (te Dashwood girls mother) stepson and his wife. Isabel is not only as sensitive as her daughter Marianne, she is a full fledged, perimenopausal hippie, and she and Mr Dashwood were not actually legally married, making matters more precarious for her children. So we do see some more actual character development in her than we do in the original novel. Same situation with Margaret, she is a tad more developed than in the original novel. Marianne and Elinor are practically the same as in the original, which results in Elinor's martyrdom, and Marianne's ninnydom. Because the innocence and sweetness of the Austen characters doesn't carry over, and instead, Elinor seems long suffering and Marianne, with her romantic ideals and artistic sensibilities just translates as annoying and narcissistic, unfortunately.
Trollope uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, cell phones, computers and cars liberally to bring her characters into the 21st century. Even Mr. Middleton's business is high tech and world wide. Yet that just seems heavy handed. I would have preferred Trollope had let the girls be old fashioned letter writers: keeping their same personalities and using these devices to "update" them seems forced and dull. This is where the story needs to deviate from the original, especially along the lines of the family's money problems, and the highly important talk of marrying for money. There's a name for people who marry for money, and I believe it translates on both sides of the pond: gold digger. And while these girls are not necessarily gold diggers, all the talk of money and marriage makes me cringe. It is just completely anachronistic. And while it is a major theme in Austen's books, that is because it is a fact of life of her time. Women had to worry about who they'd marry and how much cash they'd have, because women couldn't work. Yet here in the year 2013, women CAN work and do. Two able bodied women cannot work in this story. Granted, Marianne's constitution is delicate, but even that illness (asthma, which also killed their father?) seems anachronistic and bizarre in this day and age, with so many medicines to control these kind of conditions. It just didn't work for me.
This was not the worst thing I've read this year. I think anticipating what was going to happen next (and knowing exactly what that would be), made this book a bit of a slog for me, especially after reading it this summer and enjoying very much: I have two daughters who are close in age, and while they are both serious musicians, I think of them as very much an Elinor and a Marianne (although the older one is our Marianne!). I might be convinced to try another of these rewrites of Austen, but if I was making a suggestion for a friend who loves Austen, I'd tell them to read Longbourn by Jo Baker: the writing is far superior with original characters and plot blending in seamlessly with that of the Bennett family, as well as some re-imaginings of what really goes on behind closed doors there. It was brilliant while this book is just so-so.
3.5 stars I am a big fan of Jane Austen. Generally, I am not a fan of sequels or prequels written by someone other than the original author This yea do I go in for fanfiction. I read Longbourn earlier this year (one of my favorite books of the year), and also one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year as well. I had heard about the Harper Collins Austen Project, and when I saw this on Vine, i decided to take a chance. I have never read anything else by Trollope, so I was taking a chance, since I don't think her fiction is in line with my normal reading habits.
I re-read an Austen every year, and coincidentally, Sense and Sensibility was this year's. So the original was fresh in my mind. The reluctance on Trollope's part to deviate from the original story was disconcerting. I read Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy last year, a riff on Jane Eyre, and while the story was most certainly reflective of Jane Eyre, Livesey manages to make it very much her own story, as well as Gemma's. Trollope sticks very closely to Austen's plot and characters, which for me, with the contemporary setting, was a problem for me.
The plot is identical to Austen's: the Dashwood family (mother and three daughters) are forced out of their comfortable home by Isabel's (te Dashwood girls mother) stepson and his wife. Isabel is not only as sensitive as her daughter Marianne, she is a full fledged, perimenopausal hippie, and she and Mr Dashwood were not actually legally married, making matters more precarious for her children. So we do see some more actual character development in her than we do in the original novel. Same situation with Margaret, she is a tad more developed than in the original novel. Marianne and Elinor are practically the same as in the original, which results in Elinor's martyrdom, and Marianne's ninnydom. Because the innocence and sweetness of the Austen characters doesn't carry over, and instead, Elinor seems long suffering and Marianne, with her romantic ideals and artistic sensibilities just translates as annoying and narcissistic, unfortunately.
Trollope uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, cell phones, computers and cars liberally to bring her characters into the 21st century. Even Mr. Middleton's business is high tech and world wide. Yet that just seems heavy handed. I would have preferred Trollope had let the girls be old fashioned letter writers: keeping their same personalities and using these devices to "update" them seems forced and dull. This is where the story needs to deviate from the original, especially along the lines of the family's money problems, and the highly important talk of marrying for money. There's a name for people who marry for money, and I believe it translates on both sides of the pond: gold digger. And while these girls are not necessarily gold diggers, all the talk of money and marriage makes me cringe. It is just completely anachronistic. And while it is a major theme in Austen's books, that is because it is a fact of life of her time. Women had to worry about who they'd marry and how much cash they'd have, because women couldn't work. Yet here in the year 2013, women CAN work and do. Two able bodied women cannot work in this story. Granted, Marianne's constitution is delicate, but even that illness (asthma, which also killed their father?) seems anachronistic and bizarre in this day and age, with so many medicines to control these kind of conditions. It just didn't work for me.
This was not the worst thing I've read this year. I think anticipating what was going to happen next (and knowing exactly what that would be), made this book a bit of a slog for me, especially after reading it this summer and enjoying very much: I have two daughters who are close in age, and while they are both serious musicians, I think of them as very much an Elinor and a Marianne (although the older one is our Marianne!). I might be convinced to try another of these rewrites of Austen, but if I was making a suggestion for a friend who loves Austen, I'd tell them to read Longbourn by Jo Baker: the writing is far superior with original characters and plot blending in seamlessly with that of the Bennett family, as well as some re-imaginings of what really goes on behind closed doors there. It was brilliant while this book is just so-so.
I have read my fair share of Jane Austen adaptations and this one by far is the worst! It was extremely boring and felt like if you didn't have the modern (at the time of publishing) terms, i.e. "iPod" and "Facebook", this book could have still taken place during original era of publication. I also found this book to painfully annoying to listen to. The narrator had the most obnoxious voices, especially for the male characters, which made it difficult to enjoy.
I think I've read every adaptation of Pride and Prejudice but never the original. Jane Austen intimidates me. So I was excited to see this was book one in the Jane Austen project. It's the same characters and plot as the original Sense and Sensibility but set in current day England which makes it easier to read but you still get a feel of what the original book was like. Now when i see the Dashwood sisters referenced i know who they are. I can't wait to read book two.
It was cute, but the situation of the Dashwood ladies doesn't really cross over to current times very well. There were whole chunks of the book where I totally forgot this was supposed to be a "modern" retelling.
This book is part of a series called The Austen Project. The series reinvents and retells six of Austen's novels. This is the second book that I've read in the series. The other was Eligible, a P&P retelling.
Eligible had nothing on this one. I love S&S. As much as I wish I was a Lizzie Bennet, I relate much more to Elinor Dashwood's total repression of her feelings.
This is a fantastic retelling of S&S. It keeps all the best elements of the original novel. The bad guys stay bad guys (one of my biggest disappointments with the P&P retelling was that this was NOT the case). Marianne and Elinor are still polar opposites. Edward and Brandon are still hopeless and lovable. Fanny is still the devil.
S&S held on to all of the major plot points of the original novel as well. I never forgot that I was reading an Austen reinterpretation. It was funny, sad, heartwarming, and frustrating. I haven't read the rest of the series of Austen retellings but I think I can safely say this one will remain my favorite.
Eligible had nothing on this one. I love S&S. As much as I wish I was a Lizzie Bennet, I relate much more to Elinor Dashwood's total repression of her feelings.
This is a fantastic retelling of S&S. It keeps all the best elements of the original novel. The bad guys stay bad guys (one of my biggest disappointments with the P&P retelling was that this was NOT the case). Marianne and Elinor are still polar opposites. Edward and Brandon are still hopeless and lovable. Fanny is still the devil.
S&S held on to all of the major plot points of the original novel as well. I never forgot that I was reading an Austen reinterpretation. It was funny, sad, heartwarming, and frustrating. I haven't read the rest of the series of Austen retellings but I think I can safely say this one will remain my favorite.