Northanger Abbey

This is another of the books in the Austen Project, modern authors retelling the Austen classics. This one even has the same name as the original.Val McDermid is a successful author of crime thrillers, none of which I have read. She accepted the challenge of updating Northanger Abbey and chose to make the heroine, Catherine Morland, into a Twilight-loving, vampire-obsessed teenager. Since I'm not a big fan of Twilight or vampires in general - although I quite like Dracula - that artistic choice made it very hard for me to like Cat, as she is called in the book. She seemed utterly shallow and without substance, and since the book is all about her, that left the plot feeling quite flimsy and frivolous for me.So, we have Cat Morland, sheltered, homeschooled daughter of a vicar and his wife from the little village of Piddle Valley in Dorset. It is a happy, loving family with four children, a brother older than Cat and two sisters who are younger. The family has quite straitened financial circumstances and there's not much chance for travel, so it is very exciting for Cat when their childless neighbors, the Allens, invite her to travel with them to Edinburgh for the summer Fringe Festival.When they arrive in Edinburgh, Cat's world explodes with possibilities. She essentially takes the city by storm. She meets Bella Thorne who, almost instantly, becomes her BFF. Then she finds that Bella has her cap set for Cat's brother, James, who is a school friend of her brother, and she is equally determined that Cat will be paired with that odious brother, Johnny.Soon, Cat also meets handsome Henry Tilney at a dance and loses her heart to him, and she also meets his sister Eleanor, who invites her to come and visit them at their family home, Northanger Abbey. Cat looks at online pictures of Northanger Abbey and is entranced by the idea of it because it looks like a place where vampires might dwell. Arriving at the Abbey, she imagines that the Tilneys are a family of vampires, but the thought doesn't scare her; it only excites her.McDermid actually follows the original plot pretty closely, just changing carriages to cars and letters on paper to emails and texts and girls obsessed with The Mysteries of Udolpho to girls obsessed with Twilight and Herbridean Harpies. She makes a stab at updating the language of the teenagers, but that fell flat for me. Words like "totes" or "amazeballs" - I mean, are those even words? And do teenagers really talk like that? I don't have much opportunity to interact with teenagers these days, so perhaps I'm not the best judge...I really don't have the heart to summarize the entire plot here. There was no one in the story that I felt a connection with, and so even though the book was fairly short, reading it felt like a bit of a slog. I found myself missing the witty dialogue and beautiful language of the original.In fact, I think this book would probably be enjoyed more by someone who has never read the original and so has nothing with which to compare it. I can imagine that it might appeal to the readers of Twilight, for example, and if it could make those readers sufficiently curious about the writings of Austen to pick up the original and read it, that would be the best possible outcome.

I derived little pleasure from the first adaptation in this series (the *Sense and Sensibility* one) or the third (the *Emma* one), but this was a happier experience. Val McDermid did a good job coming up with modern analogues for the original story (e.g., homeschooling to account for Catherine Morland’s extreme naïveté). The dialogue was very well done; I especially appreciated Henry’s wit, which was clever without meanness. And Bella was totally hilarious; she dominated every scene she was in.Henry Tilney is my favorite JA hero (at the moment), so I came prepared to like him in this version, and did. Catherine (Cat) Morland is a little more intellectual in this retelling than in the original—though still without worldly wisdom—leading me to hope that she and Henry might be better suited for the long haul than in the original. If you can improve on Jane Austen, by all means do so!One thing I missed that was in the original was the way JA systematically set up the expectations of gothic romance, only to undercut them over and over with down-to-earth reality. McDermid introduces modern-day gothic analogues, such as Cat’s obsession with vampires, but we simply hear her internal speculations about these elements without having the genre’s clichés so integrally woven into the plot.Speaking of the vampires, I thought that element was taken a bit too far. It wasn’t necessary for Cat to believe they really existed; the story would have worked just as well had she merely thought the Tilneys reminded her of vampires. She had enough fodder for suspicion with regards to the general and his dead wife that she didn’t need to take and hold such a ridiculous idea. Adding in the vampire element simply muddied the revelation scene.Quibble time: I did not appreciate the various coy references to *Pride and Prejudice*. They didn’t make logical sense to me—if Jane Austen existed and published P&P, why would she not have published *Northanger Abbey*, which she wrote before P&P? Just distracting. Another quibble is that I did not really see why Cat and Eleanor (sp? Elinor?) Tilney would have become friends in the first place. Lastly (**spoiler! spoiler!**), I saw no particular reason for Henry to jump right to a proposal to Cat in the end; surely they could have begun by dating.I very much liked the Edinburgh setting, and the vivid descriptions of the abbey and Henry’s house. The story moved along nicely, and gave me a lot of laughs.

I was unfortunate enough to first meet Northanger Abbey as a teenager and, even worse, at school. It was chosen no doubt well-meaningly, because it's about a teenager but it is making fun of that teenager from a more adult perspective, so not exactly appealing when you are going through similar trials yourself. Now I can enjoy it more and laugh along.This was another happy experience of an updated version of Jane Austen. My only quibbles are the author's tendency to spell things out for the reader - I suppose she was writing for teenagers (I recently read "The Railway Children" and found that author very condescending to her young readers although I still enjoyed the story); plus she had to really twist the plot to manage to get her heroine cut off from the Internet. Using the Edinburgh Festival instead of Bath was a good idea as were the other updates in general.After reading Joanna Trollope's update of "Sense and Sensibility" I felt it proved I just do know know modern upper class English usage. I now realise it probably just means I don't know modern English teen speak (having lived in USA for 15 years and having no teens in my vicinity).

This is a brilliant re-imagining of Austen’s work.First for the Austen fans: if you are a purist who dutifully reads but always hates any kind of re-writing or continuation, do not bother, you will only hurt yourself.If you are a fan who enjoys the odd modernisation and adaptation, this is one of the best I’ve read (and I have read a lot). The feel of the original and the subtlety of the social commentary is very much present, and the gothic undertones just as delightful. The setting of the Edinburgh festival is a wonderful way of introducing our new Catherine to society. The characters are all faithful to the originals. Catherine is a sheltered young girl taking the world by storm. Henry, just as witty and modest, and the pairing just as endearing. However, in their new surroundings of the modern world, they are more youthful, making this more of a young adult story in its tone. Some of the dialogue and slang is a little dated, but that is easily overlooked.Finally, for or those of you wondering why I keep comparing this to Jane Austen and those of you (god forbid) wondering who Jane Austen is, no prior knowledge of the original is needed to enjoy this book, it is light hearted and heart-warming, but I would suggest you get cracking with the classics.

I liked this book. For me it wasn't bad. Adapting Austen is hard. I read reviews online. People found it hard to believe a girl could consider the Tilneys as vampires. That's the point of satire. Making an early 19th century novel modern is a challenge. Some people fail to grasp what they read. Miss Morland read Radcliffe, Cat reads about vampires. Teenagers have an imagination. I had no problem with that bit. Bloggers claim Cat reads only Twilight, which is false. She reads Pride and Prejudice and zombies, as well as the prequel to Jane Eyre. That prequel is a real book, published and reviewed. It describes how Rochester met his wife and why he employed a servant to stay in the attic. What is not real is the Hebridean harpies series. McDermid invented that. References to being a Jane Austen heroine are included in McDermid's novel. Bella Thorpe claims that Ellie Tilney is so formal in her speech as if she came straight out of Pride and Prejudice. There is another reference to an Austen heroine, but don't want to spoil it. What I found hard to believe was that Bella Thorpe got engaged to James Morland at a young age. Also Ellie Tilney is old enough to go to art college. It is implied she has A levels, so she must be 19. Anyway she is a bit older than Cat. However Ellie can't leave her father who wants her to marry. Can't she get a job in the 21st century. She doesn't need Henry marrying Cat to find the courage to defy her father. She sells her mother’s jewels to pay college fees. Couldn't she do it before, instead of complaining to Cat about her father’s strict rules? I liked that Henry is a lawyer, which is more modern than a clergyman. The Allens are like in the original except that Mr. Allen comes to Edinburgh to rest, rather than treat his gout. Mrs. Allen shops and complains she doesn't know anyone like in Austen. In this version Mr. Allen is involved in the theatre and goes on holiday. I think Edinburgh does stand in nicely for Bath as there's a book festival and film festival to replace the amusementa of Austen's time. There's even a Highland Ball in this modern version. The rich still live in the UK and have ballrooms, so that wasn't over the top. Cat sits out a dance to avoid dancind with Thorpe like in the original, but the whole etiquette associated with clothing and meeting new people is less formal. I found the sms rather funny and references to Twitter hilarious, but the author had to do something to replace letters. Postcards were also mentioned. It was ok.

Rather unexpectedly I thoroughly enjoyed this.The tone was pitch perfect. Austen's Catherine and Isabella segued plausibly into Cat and Bella with foolishness intact. General Tilney was reliably awful as before and his dispatching of Catherine onto a long distance bus journey home simply perfect.If you enjoyed the original, I suspect you will (shamefully) find pleasure in this one.

This is in my top 5 worst books l have ever read..Appalling narrative and done in a juvenile style with juvenile subject matter.Nothing happens except does he love me or maybe he doesn't than again he might do..On and on it drones..Just downright embarrassing and tedious.

I started reading and nearly gave up at the first chapter as I adore Jane Austin and couldn't see where this was going. Because I have so much respect for the author I ploughed on and with her light touch she has managed to reproduce Austin in modern time. I really enjoyed it, although I did find the Vampire lines a bit OTT.Teenagers will love it and hopefully will go on to Austin.Which I think was the main idea.