Miss Bates: Emma Revisited by Catherine Cliff – A witty and ambitious debut

详细摘要

It’s a brave choice to use a beloved author’s characters as a springboard to create a fresh and fascinating take on a classic novel ...

Is one author’s literary excursion into another writer’s work an act of competition? A picking-over of ideas? Whether it’s to conjure up a prequel or sequel, fill in a mysterious gap in the story, or reimagine a classic in a contemporary setting – such as Barbara Kingsolver’s spinning David Copperfield into modern-day Appalachia in Demon Copperhead – using an author’s existing characters as a springboard can create…

Choosing Jane Austen, a writer with a devoted fan base, as the starting point is brave. It’s also smart, as Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister proved, for Austen’s characters come with so much personality to work from. In Miss Bates Catherine Cliff gives a complex, spirited inner life to a classic Austen secondary character: Emma’s Henrietta Bates.

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