February 1, 2015
In the latest installment of the Austen Project, McCall Smith (The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe, 2014, etc.) catapults snobbish matchmaker Emma Woodhouse into the 21st century.His latter-day Emma possesses all the youth and beauty and a good deal of the wit of Jane Austen's heroine. She also shares her predecessor's less appealing qualities. Bossy and controlling as a child, she's only more so now that she's 22 and bent on launching her own interior design consultancy. In creating Emma, Austen supposedly set about depicting a character that nobody but she would like very much. McCall Smith paints a similarly challenging if ultimately fond portrait of a young woman whose hubris causes complete chaos before she's forced to acquire some humility and self-knowledge. Devotees of the original will recognize the likes of Miss Taylor, the no-nonsense governess who all but raises Emma and her sister after they lose their mother, and George Knightley, Emma's friend and the only person brave enough to challenge her. Mr. Woodhouse, Emma's father, has evolved from a "valetudinarian" into a germaphobe crank, though to get around questions of how he manages the upkeep on their country pile, McCall Smith also makes him a retired inventor who years earlier patented a valve for the liquid-nitrogen cylinders used by dermatologists. Modernity is mischievously accommodated elsewhere, too: The flashy young vicar's nouveau riche wife is recast as a TV talent show contestant, while dim, pretty Harriet Smith, the illegitimate product of an affair in Austen's telling, here becomes the progeny of a single mother and a sperm donor. Emma even finds herself questioning her sexuality. In less capable hands, it could all seem clunky and crass. Instead, McCall Smith has written a delightfully droll, thoughtful novel that reflects on money's enduring role in relationships as well as on the nature of this meddlesome heroine's long-lived appeal.
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November 1, 2014
In this retelling of Jane Austen's Emma from the beloved author of the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," Emma Woodhouse returns home to the village of Highbury after university to launch an interior design business. Of course, she's also full of advice for those around her, including unassuming teacher's assistant Harriet Smith, alluring Frank Churchill, and Jane Fairfax. So many Austen rewrites; whatever happens here, McCall Smith fans will be anticipating.
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2015
When newly minted interior designer Emma Woodhouse returns to Hartfield after graduating from university, she finds village affairs in disarray. Her sister has eloped via motorcycle. Her governess is filling her day with obscure online courses. Her father is fretting about microbes and infection. And her friend Harriet has developed an unsuitable fondness for a local innkeeper. An impresario is needed, and young Emma, with her freshly educated eye, is only too happy to oblige. VERDICT The third volume in HarperCollins's series of Jane Austen reboots, this title follows Joanna Trollope's Sense and Sensibility and Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey. Like the rest of the project, this effort meets with mixed success. McCall Smith's charming prose and gentle humor marry marvelously with Austen's iconic affairs of the heart, so well that the book reads like a Regency piece. As a result the cell phones, Mini Coopers, and gastropubs of the 21st century seem jarringly out of place. Still, this retelling gives Austenphiles an enjoyable opportunity to visit with the Woodhouse clan and is sure to be a hit with McCall Smith's legion of fans. As for the Austen project itself, one should reserve judgement, at least until the July publication of Curtis Sittenfeld's Pride and Prejudice. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/14; see also "A Modern Emma: Alexander McCall Smith Reimagines Jane Austen's Classic" by Barbara Hoffert, LJ 12/14.--Ed.]--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
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