Before, after and otherwise
LOVE TO FIND OUT IF YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER REALLY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER? OR PERHAPS WHAT THEIR HISTORY IS? READ ON
CHARACTERS BECOME so real in our bestloved books, it’s only natural that we want them to live on and know more about their lives before and after the story that made them famous. Here are our favourite prequels, sequels and retellings to add to your Christmas list. Shakespeare Shakespeare was a great ‘reteller’ of tales, adapting and changing his source material to tease something new and wonderful from old stories of love and marriage, revenge and jealousy. Hag-Seed
BY MARGARET ATWOOD ( HOGARTH SHAKESPEARE)
The Hogarth Shakespeare project asks current authors to add a modern twist to the Bard’s work; here Margaret Atwood throws a handful of theatrical confetti over The Tempest, which swaps the isolated island setting for Fletcher County Correctional Institute, the colourful cast of characters for a clutch of criminals and magician Prospero for Felix, a grieving, embittered artistic director who says of his scuppered career: “If anyone had told him that he’d ‘be doing Shakespeare with a pack of cons in the slammer’ he’d have said they were hallucinating.” A Thousand Acres
BY JANE SMILEY ( HARPER PERENNIAL)
Tyrannical, successful farmer Larry Cook has decided to divide his huge Iowan farm between his three daughters, Ginny, Rose and Caroline and, just as in King Lear, the play that inspired this epic, novel, it leads to tragedy; “We’ve always known families that live together for years without speaking…” says Ginny, but for the Cooks, words become weapons, as grief, revenge and power struggles wreck all kinds of relationships. Vinegar Girl
BY ANNE TYLER ( HOGARTH SHAKESPEARE)
Ann Tyler revisits The Taming of The Shrew in a sprightly reprise of the story. Kate Battista is a reluctant romantic, inveigled into a relationship by her elderly academic father, reluctant to lose his assistant Pyotr, whose visa is about to expire… expect the line “Kiss me, Katya.” The Gap of Time
BY JEANETTE WINTERSON ( VINTAGE)
Winterson’s cover of The Winter’s Tale takes place in rich, ruthless London and a “hot and heavy” American city that reads like New Orleans. Jealous Leontes becomes Leo, a hedge fund manager, and his beloved Hermione is MiMi, a French chanteuse, in this musical tale of revenge and forgiveness.
Austen Austen investigated the class structures, social mores and the vagaries of the human heart in Regency England. Modern life is not so different it seems. Eligible
BY CURTIS SITTENFELD ( THE BOROUGH PRESS)
Pride and Prejudice meets the age of reality TV. Liz Bennet is writer on a feminist magazine, and her potential BF is a haughty, handsome neurosurgeon – Fitzwilliam Darcy, who’s good in bed, but bad at social niceties. But back in her childhood home in Cincinnati she comes in for exactly the same kind of relationship interference and scrutiny that so bedevilled Austen’s Elizabeth. Some things never change, as this winning update makes clear. Death Comes To Pemberley
BY PD JAMES ( FABER)
Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years and are happily preparing to host their annual ball, until wayward sister Lydia arrives at
“Austen investigated class structure and the vagaries of the human heart... modern life is not so different”
Pemberley with a tale of murder and mayhem and the image of her reckless husband Wickham standing over the dead body of his best friend. But is he guilty? A pitch-perfect Austenian mystery. Love and Friendship In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated
BY WHIT STILLMAN ( TWO ROADS)
Whit Stillman’s novel sets about redressing the calumnies heaped on the titular Lady Susan by Jane Austen, on whose early epistolary novel this is based. Stillman has fun playing the earnest, gullible narrator’s misconceptions against an arch manipulator in this witty, sly spoof. Longbourn
BY JO BAKER ( BLACK SWAN)
Baker’s novel is a below-stairs look at Pride and
Prejudice, where the servants take centre stage. As the Bennets go about their business, Sarah and her cohorts are dealing with their dirty laundry, hands chilblained from cold, all too aware of the brutal reality behind the veneer of Georgian society. Brontës It’s hard to ignore the hypnotic appeal of the Brontë sisters, who wrote about the most intense human experiences from their cold, cramped Yorkshire home, and inspired many a modern storyteller. Wide Sargasso Sea BY JEAN RHYS ( PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS) Jean Rhys’ exquisite prequel to Jane Eyre gives a voice to the ‘madwoman in the attic’, who was Antoinette Cosway before she became the first Mrs Rochester. ‘‘There is always the other side’’ to any story insists Antoinette, and hers is set in the sultry heat of the West Indies, in the violent aftermath of emancipation. Married off to a starchy Englishman, she leaves behind the troubled island, but the legacy of her family history of slave ownership, and the untold secret of her mother’s mental illness haunts her, leaving her alone and vulnerable in the chilly atmosphere of Thornfield Hall. Nelly Dean BY ALISON CASE ( THE BOROUGH PRESS) A heartbreaking novel that heads to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and tells the story of Nelly Dean, the Earnshaws’ most loyal servant. Brought up as an almost sibling to Cathy and Hindley, everything changes with the arrival of Heathcliff, as Nelly is demoted and staunch relationships are sidelined. The Madwoman Upstairs BY CATHERINE LOWELL ( QURECUS) Samantha Whipple is the last remaining descendent of the Brontës, and the inheritor of a family treasure trove, a clutch of rumoured novels, diaries and paintings created by her famous ancestors. The clues to their whereabouts come from her father’s annotated copies of the sisters’ work and Samantha heads on a literary quest, with a little help from a handsome Oxford professor in this fun, frothy literary mystery. The Lost Child BY CARYL PHILLIPS ( PICADOR) Caryl Phillips was inspired by the character of Heathcliff in this emotionally raw, vividly told look at people who are outcasts, unable to find a home or a sense of belonging. She imagines Heathcliff’s origins and then heads to the contemporary world and the self-destructive Monica (who has parallels with Cathy) and is herself a bit of a lost soul.