I'm not normally drawn to reworkings of classics -- not tempted by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies nor by Emma and the Werewolves -- nor by Kindle freebies which are too often not very good, But when Georgiana Darcy's Diary turned up in my email as a freebie, well, I couldn't resist.
And I'm enjoying it, mainly because I'd always wanted to know a bit more about Darcy's sister -- not to mention the ineffable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, her pathetic daughter Anne, and the detestable Caroline Bingley . It's great fun to see the destinies this author works out for them.
The novel stays reasonably true to Austen's world -- the language is less formal as the book is told through Georgiana's diary and I've been jarred once by an over-modern phrase -- but the book is still great fun. Evidently there are several more -- one of which I've already downloaded . . .
I started thinking about other novels that have taken a minor character and imagined an entire life for them. What with copyrights, the novelist will have to stick to classics -- Moby Dick gave rise to Ahab's Wife, Huckleberry Finn to Finn by Jon Clinch, Little Women to March, Jane Eyre to The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys , Wizard of Oz to Wicked . . . and Neil Gaiman wrote a terrific (and rather troubling) story about the adult Susan -- the one of the four Narnia children who didn't go to Narnia/Heaven at the end of the series. What are some others? Or who are some minor characters from the classics that you'd like to know more about? Wouldn't it be fun to see Anne Tyler tackle the later married life of Kate and Petruchio (from The Taming of the Shrew?)
