So what makes it so special then? Is the story good enough and original enough to stand alone without that construct? That, I don't know.
I guess I'm just looking at it like anything else that's used a hook as a selling point.
The Friday Night Knitting Club
is, most likely (and here I admit I haven't read it), another book about female friendships and conflicts, but the hook is the knitting angle. This book uses Austen's name instead. Could be good, could be a pile of crap, but as always, if a publisher thinks it's going to sell, then ...
If you're going to mess with the classics, do it in a way like Jasper Fforde did in The Eyre Affair, by using the story as a minor plot point to the main storyline.
If you're going to mess with the classics, do it in a way like Jasper Fforde did in The Eyre Affair, by using the story as a minor plot point to the main storyline.
Really? You're not supposed to exploit the massive marketing advantage of slapping Jane Austen's name on any old crap and exploiting her fan base for a quick buck?
::goes back to check his Capitalism playbook::
If you're going to mess with the classics, do it in a way like Jasper Fforde did in The Eyre Affair, by using the story as a minor plot point to the main storyline.
But then you wouldn't have
Wide Sargasso Sea.
I'm not saying every book that uses some kind of classic lit hook is going to be *good*. I'm not saying it's not a cheap way to guarantee a sale, either. But I also don't believe that every book that does is automatically *bad*.
I do agree that it's a little discouraging to see people selling books based on someone else's work (and great work, at that). But publishing absolutely *is* a business, and they need to sell books as much as individual authors do. Probably moreso.
And honestly, I'd rather see someone playing in Jane Austen's sandbox than see another book by or about Larry the Cable Guy, or The Big Book of Bathroom Humor.
I've noticed a number of books that follow up on Pride and Prejudice, or play off it. Most seem to be either what happens when Darcy and Elizabeth marry, one was about their daughter, one was about Lydia Bennett, and so on. I understand the appeal of playing off a known - and loved - book, but a lot of these don't appeal to me ... and there just seem to be a lot of them.
one was about Lydia Bennett
Really? Man, you could not
pay
me to read an entire novel about Lydia. She's a great, delicious trainwreck of a secondary character in Elizabeth's and Jane's stories, and P&P would be a markedly lesser novel without her sheer thoughtless awfulness, but I literally cannot imagine an entire novel about her being anything but agony. She hasn't even got the cleverness and animal cunning to make a great antiheroine like Lizzie Eustace or Becky Sharp.
JZ - yup. I remember it actually getting pretty good reviews ... but if you really disliked her, then I'd say avoid it.
Good goddamn, I had no idea there were so many P&P sequels/riffs.
I've read one of those called Pemberly by (I think) Andrea Barrett. She also wrote a follow-up on Sense and Sensibility called The Third Sister, about the youngest daughter whose name I can't remember offhand.
