Publisher HarperCollins' ''Austen Project'', in which best-selling contemporary authors reimagine and modernise her six complete works, is brilliantly conceived. So far, Joanna Trollope has taken on Sense & Sensibility and crime writer Val McDermid Northanger Abbey.
Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith is the perfect choice for Emma. Both his and Austen's strengths lie in observation, characterisation and satire.
First, a partial disclaimer: I have always struggled with Emma Woodhouse - the character, that is. She is loveable in her familiarity, but not likeable due to her condescending and interfering manner. Of course that is Austen's point, and it is the mark of a great author that one can dislike a character, yet still enjoy the book.
McCall Smith's Emma is every bit as annoying as her Regency predecessor. As a motherless child she was a ''bossy little madam'' kept partially in check by her governess, Miss Taylor. Now, fresh from a university interior design course, and driving a snappy Mini Cooper, she is ruling the roost (the country family home of Hartfield), surrounding town, its inhabitants, and her father, a well-meaning but ineffectual man, largely confined to the house because of his paranoia about germs.
Emma is every bit an English ''it'' girl, with too much money and time. Austen lovers do not require a plot summary. Suffice to say, with little else to occupy her, and the idea of a job just that, the busybody turns her hand to matchmaking in the 21st century, whilst remaining every bit as inconceivably blind to her own heart.
Luckily for Emma, her fellow characters and the reader, there is still a Mr Right, aka George Knightley, to help her learn the error of her meddlesome ways, which certainly don't get any less tiresome with time!
- Helen Speirs is ODT books editor.
WIN A COPY: The ODT has five copies of Emma by Alexander McCall Smith (RRP $49.99) to give away courtesy of Borough Press and HarperCollins.
For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email and ''Emma book competition'' in the subject line by 5pm on Tuesday, November 25.
LAST WEEK'S WINNERS: Winners of last week's giveaway, Francis Plug: How to Be a Public Author by Paul Ewen, courtesy of Text Publishing, were: Jeanette Miller, of Wanaka, Annette Direen, Annette Carr and A Aitken, all of Dunedin, and Suzanne Ellison, of Karitane.
