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A review by lindseysparks
Emma by Alexander McCall Smith
2.0
I'm not a huge fan of retellings, although oddly, I do tend to like them more on screen (The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Clueless). Maybe it's because on screen there's usually more modernization while authors tend to end up mimicking the original author more and it's more obvious on paper. I adore Alexander McCall Smith though and felt like his take on Emma could be quite funny.
Spoiler alert: it wasn't. His Emma is just plain mean and all of the characters except Mr. Woodhouse come off much worse than in the original. The writing was very good and there was enough to keep me reading but I can't really say I enjoyed it. I kept forgetting it was supposed to be modern. If you took away the cars and mentions of women going to university it really wasn't modernized at all. Trying to picture the characters saying some of the things they said in 2014 instead of 1814 was just absurd.
It has such a lovely cover that I'm tempted to keep it just for that but should probably pass it along.
Spoiler alert: it wasn't. His Emma is just plain mean and all of the characters except Mr. Woodhouse come off much worse than in the original. The writing was very good and there was enough to keep me reading but I can't really say I enjoyed it. I kept forgetting it was supposed to be modern. If you took away the cars and mentions of women going to university it really wasn't modernized at all. Trying to picture the characters saying some of the things they said in 2014 instead of 1814 was just absurd.
It has such a lovely cover that I'm tempted to keep it just for that but should probably pass it along.