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Old 03-16-2014, 10:51 AM   #19240
missimpossible
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Glasgow
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap View Post
Looking at the reviews on Goodreads, a lot of people think it was awful.

I think it's going to depend a lot on people's expectations and whether one is predisposed to feel okay about the whole concept or not - if you think the entire idea is stupid, this probably won't be a lot of fun; if you're curious and have no inherent issues with the idea, it should be at least moderately enjoyable, I think.

Joanna Trollope is an experienced, competent writer (I haven't actually read her other books, but she seems to be popular and has been for a long time), so .. writing-wise, while it's not Austen, it came across as a perfectly fine (if not particularly deep or literary) modern novel.
I just finished this last night, and I pretty much agreed with your assessment. It was a light, fun read, and it didn't stray as much from the original story as I would have expected. Of course, it's not the original, but I'm surprised so many people had such vitriolic reactions to it. It probably just depends on whether you're predisposed to like that sort of thing or not - I like pastiches on Austen just fine, as long as they're done well (I loved Clueless and Lost in Austen, but Austenland not so much...)

Spoiler:
I also agree with you regarding the modernisation - having read a couple of reviews beforehand I was expecting it to be chock-full of swearing and sex and so on (and not in a good way) and it really, really wasn't. I really thought it was pretty tame in that regard, which isn't a complaint, but it made some of the stuff surrounding Marianne's "disgrace" harder to swallow.
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