Emma - A Modern Retelling

I was rather surprised by my reaction to Alexander McCall Smith's Emma - A Modern Retelling (#498).  I don't remember Emma being so mean in Jane Austen's classic novel.  Interfering and meddlesome, yes, but not so mean-spirited.  In consequence, I spent most of this book disliking Emma intensely for her superiority and judgmental high-handedness.  The reason this took me aback was the warmth with which McCall Smith's #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series is imbued.  Characters may act badly, but we can still sympathize with them and their actions. Not so here; I kept wondering how George Knightley could possibly love this Emma.

Alexander McCall Smith doesn't keep the reader guessing about who is who in his adaptation of this story.  All the names have been preserved from the original, and so have the characters' relationships to each other.  If you're already familiar with the story, you know exactly where it is heading, and that's a good deal of the pleasure of reading a book like this.  The modern Emma has gone to university (not a first rate college, but respectable) and drives a Mini Cooper, but she still cuts the same swath through the neighboring society.  Somehow, landowners are still an important force in the environs of Highbury village.  Some things, it seems, never change.

I wasn't as enchanted with this modern version as I had hoped to be; it will never occupy the same place in the pantheon as Jane Austen's original.  But still, it makes for an undemanding beach read.