|
|
1.0 out of 5 stars
A complete failure, April 14 2003
I have heard many fellow online Pemberlians speak with loathing of Emma Tennant and her novels....but naturally I was curious to check things out for myself.I must admit, it is as bad and far more than everything I have heard. Nearly every aspect of this novel is atrocious, and a true Jane Austen fan will detest every page of it. If you are not an avid reader of Austen novels, you may tolerate it, or at least not feel such a revulsion; but in that case, the plot and characters will simply be confusing, not to mention completely uninteresing. Tennant takes the delicious, intriguing characters in Jane Austen's "Emma" and turns them into horribly twisted, shallow, misguided, and unappealing cardboard cutouts. The motivations and representations of our dear Emma, Mr. Knightley, etc., as mentioned in other reviews, is skewed as far as is humanly possible; if this were a parody, perhaps this could be acceptable, but it is not, and the novel takes itself far too seriously and inaccurately to be enjoyable in any way, shape, or form, either as an Austen sequel or parody. Plotwise, "Emma in Love" is hackneyed and boring, taking liberties with events that certainly would never have happened in a lifetime of Austen stories. The writing is equally bad - about on par with ... romance novels that come a dime a dozen. This is certainly no kin whatsoever to the Jane Austen I know, and the witty and engaging Regency author does not deserve such a degrading and trashy "sequel." Far from being adventurous, "Emma in Love" treads overtrodden ground as simply a twisted romance novel, and comes close to desecrating a classic author's grave (to use a melodramatization worthy of the Austen heroine Catherine Morland). Rereading the original will do you a world of good, especially to cleanse the mind from dreck such as this.
|
