Juliet Archer

My favourite sheep is called Jilly …

Perhaps I’d better explain!

A friend alerted me to a mention on jillysheep’s blog, so off I went in some trepidation and found the following entries:

Monday 12^th January 2009: I’m enjoying The Importance of Being Emma as I did Jane Austen’s Emma for A Level English Literature and I find I can still remember all the characters and the gist of the plot. I think it’s clever the way the story has been translated into the modern world with Philip Elton something in accountancy rather than a clergyman and Miss Bates a company secretary with an elderly mother to look after. Harriet Smith is a flaky temp and Emma’s father is a hypochondriac with access to much more medical knowledge than the prototype. I’m looking forward to the next one in this series which will be based on Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Thursday 15^th January 2009: I’ve nearly finished reading The Importance of Being Emma by Juliet Archer - the modern day interpretation of Emma. This is an excellent sparkling story. I was put off when I first started because it is narrated alternately by Emma and Mr Knightley - in very short sections some less than a page. I seem to have read a lot of books with multiple narrators recently and my first reaction was oh no not another one, but I got used to it very quickly. It is very true to the spirit of the original showing how universal Jane Austen’s characters are.

Friday 16^th January 2009: I finished The Importance of Being Emma by Juliet Archer and was quite sad to finish it. I loved comparing the characters with the Jane Austen version and seeing how the modern incidents lined up with the original. It can be enjoyed in its own right without having read Emma but there is an added dimension if you have read it. I shall look forward to the next in the series which is based on Persuasion.

Now you can see why my favourite sheep is called Jilly!