I've been reading at a great rate knowing I'm back at work next week. Most notably:
Carol Goodman - The Sonnet Lover - Rose Asher has built up a prestigious academic career in New York and has almost forgotten her first love - Bruno - who she fell for twenty years ago in Italy. When circumstances conspire to send her back to La Civetta near Florence she wonders whether old wounds will be re-opened. She is on the trail of some missing manuscripts which may reveal the identity of Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the sonnets, but her search will bring her into physical danger before the mystery is solved. It's well written with an interesting literary mystery at its heart - it kept me reading.
Ben Goldacre - Bad Science - shows what's behind all the medical scare stories we read in the press and how research is manipulated to give the horrific headlines. It is worth reading for its chapter on the placebo effect alone. Easy to read even if you are not scientifically minded and gives you the knowledge to find the facts in a scare story.
Elizabeth Aston - The Second Mrs Darcy - A Jane Austen inspired story which features Octavia Darcy - widowed after a very short marriage to a Darcy cousin. She returns to England from India and decides she will not look for a husband - scandalising her half sisters. An unexpected legacy make sit possible for her to set up her own establishment. This is reminiscent of some of Georgette Heyer's novels with headstrong heroines and interesting heroes. I enjoyed it.
I have also put a review of Noreen Marshall's - Dictionary of Children's Clothes on Amazon. For anyone who wants to read my reviews on Amazon they are now posted under the pen name of Damaskcat.
Showing posts with label jane Austen. the Brontes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jane Austen. the Brontes. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Jane Austen Sequels
I am currently intrigued by the number of Jane Austen sequels/prequels etc there are out there. I had a quick scout round on Amazon and came up with a grand total of 67 though I'm sure there are more than that. I then looked up www.pemberley.com - which is a largely American site devoted to all things Jane. They have a section on sequels/prequels where I found more of them - and their lists didn't include some I'd found. The site also includes fanfiction - i.e stories which fans have posted which may or may not be of any literary merit at all.
Some authors seem to have made a career out of sequels to famous novels - e.g. Emma Tennant - who has also written around the Brontes as well. I've also located one by Rachel Billington - Perfect Happiness - a continuation of Emma. I suppose one of the well known books on this sort of theme is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which has become a classic in its own right and deals with the early life of the first Mrs Rochester - the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.
The attraction of such literary efforts must be partly that the characters are already in existence so potentially you have a ready made audience for the book. Though of course the purists may not consider them to be worth reading. Many sequels do fail to achieve the popularity of the original - the sequel to Gone with the Wind sank without trace. Many of the spin offs from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca have not been commercial successes.
Of course using the characters from work which is out of copyright is attractive as well, though sequels of works mentioned above have been sanctioned and even encouraged by copyright holders.
I have not checked to see whether there are any sequels to the works of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Both these authors must have abandoned minor characters who could be turned into heroes and heroines of their own stories and yet no one seems to have taken up the challenge - or not that I have heard of. Does anyone know any different?
Some authors seem to have made a career out of sequels to famous novels - e.g. Emma Tennant - who has also written around the Brontes as well. I've also located one by Rachel Billington - Perfect Happiness - a continuation of Emma. I suppose one of the well known books on this sort of theme is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which has become a classic in its own right and deals with the early life of the first Mrs Rochester - the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.
The attraction of such literary efforts must be partly that the characters are already in existence so potentially you have a ready made audience for the book. Though of course the purists may not consider them to be worth reading. Many sequels do fail to achieve the popularity of the original - the sequel to Gone with the Wind sank without trace. Many of the spin offs from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca have not been commercial successes.
Of course using the characters from work which is out of copyright is attractive as well, though sequels of works mentioned above have been sanctioned and even encouraged by copyright holders.
I have not checked to see whether there are any sequels to the works of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Both these authors must have abandoned minor characters who could be turned into heroes and heroines of their own stories and yet no one seems to have taken up the challenge - or not that I have heard of. Does anyone know any different?
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