Her works are “perennial favourites” (Carson xi) and, furthermore, there seems to be a huge demand for “Austen novelties”. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.Ever since their publication between the years of 18, Jane Austen’s novels, namely Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion, have never gone out of print. Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.ĭisclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. And bottom line, we’ve got a light-hearted romance and the story of a young adult going out in the world for the first time and making new friends – some better than others.įind this review on Sonderbooks at: Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site. It’s a bit amazing how neatly the situations fit in modern life.

Still, Austen fans will enjoy reading the update.

And while Val McDermid did give the final problem with the General a modern twist, she left in the foreshadowing of the problem from the original novel, which ended up falling rather flat. The story of her supposed friendship with Isabelle Thorpe is a bit more painful. Though I have to face that I’m not crazy about the plot of Northanger Abbey other than the fun it has with gothic novels. Other than that, it was again a good translation of all the situations to modern times. I don’t think anyone would start believing they are real, no matter how mysterious the family. I don’t care how much a girl likes to read paranormal romances. To me, it was a much bigger stretch that Cat would believe in vampires than that she’d believe a gothic novel was real. In the modern version, Cat Morland imagines that vampire novels are real. Catherine Morland imagined Northanger Abbey as the setting for one, and fantasized a sinister mystery in the family’s history. The original Northanger Abbey made fun of gothic novels.

In this case, Northanger Abbey is one of my favorite Austens (or at least in the top half, after Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion), but in translating it, it actually seems a bit less believable to me. Now, with Sense and Sensibility, Joanna Trollope took an Austen novel I wasn’t terribly fond of and translated to modern times, which had it make a lot more sense. Another modern Jane Austen update! Very fun! Val McDermid takes the exact story of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and writes it as Jane herself might have written it if she were alive today.

Northanger abbey by val mcdermid