A review by lmfm
Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith

1.0

This is another modernization from The Austen Project, and let's just say I wasn't a fan. I ended up skimming the last 1/3 or so. It took all the mystery and intrigue of "Emma" and made it distant and, frankly, boring. Some modernizations are harmless but I felt like he got some very fundamental things wrong about the characters and I was bothered by it. Emma is one of my favorite Austen heroines because she is both likeable and deeply flawed. I felt like we never really got to know this Emma. And the character of George Knightly is almost absent from much of this book. I love their interactions in Austen's novel: how they work as a team (especially as relates to Emma's father), how they fundamentally understand each other ("his eyes received the truth from hers", etc). I never got the sense of this Mr. Knightley as much of a person. I love how Austen's novel is like a puzzle to be solved/unlocked. This was just a collection of characters with not-very-realistic interactions.