Joanna Trollope has reshaped Sense And Sensibility. Val McDermid has rebuilt Northanger Abbey. Seth Grahame-Smith has given us (unasked) Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. Someone called Mitzi Szereto has written - I use the verb loosely - Pride And Prejudice: Hidden Lusts.
Why do they do it? Is it like Tom Cruise wanting to play Hamlet? (Breathe easy; I'm making that one up.) Some, of course, are spoofs. Others seem affirmations of the modern authors' significance. The results are usually uneven and seldom satisfying. Witness Alexander McCall Smith's attempt.
What's it like? Well, it lacks certain Austen qualities: subtlety of character, intricacy of plot, elegance and forensic wit of style. Other than that, it's an amiable enough romp.
No need to tell you the plot. A few chunks are moved around; Miss Taylor doesn't get married until nearly halfway through. Otherwise it's the same sequence of events, but reassigned to the 1980s.
Mr Woodhouse, born during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a hypochondriac obsessed with vitamin supplements and "New Zealand green-lipped mussel oil" (nice). He fathers his two daughters and Emma heads off to university before coming home in the hols to run Dad and house.
Metres of contemporary colour are glued on. There's an Aga stove, radio talkback, DNA refs. James Weston has a personal trainer; Robert Martin works in a B&B; Jane Fairfax plays Satie on a Yamaha piano; Harriet Smith's favourite expression of approval is "Cutissimo!" It's all clever, often witty, sits on the plot instead of in it.
