Review by Jane Austen’s Regency World
Lively, funny and inventive retelling of Emma for a 21st-century audience.
As Jane’s Fame amply demonstrates, the Austen machine goes churning on with no apparent end in sight. In the several years I have been reviewing books for Jane Austen’s Regency World, I’ve read an unfeasibly large number of ‘homages’, sequels, prequels, spoofs and spin-offs. Some are pedestrian, others pretentious, but a surprising number take Austen’s characters or plots to unexpected new destinations and create something fresh and entertaining. Juliet Archer (well, she has the right initials anyway) has reinvented my absolute favourite Austen novel for a 21st-century audience, and done it with breathtaking charm and verve.
Archer’s Emma Woodhouse is immediately recognisable as Austen’s creation: pretty, rich, spoilt and devoid of even the tiniest scintilla of self-awareness. Her matchmaking exploits mirror those of her 18th-century counterpart - as the novel begins, she’s congratulating herself on having paired off her best friend with Tom Weston and is casting round for more candidates, as well as lining up suitable objects for her own affections.
As marketing manager for Highbury Foods, Emma is almost immediately brought face-to-face with Mark Knightley, stepping into his absent father’s shoes at the helm of Donwell Organics. Of course, Emma fails to recognise Mark’s good qualities and wastes far too much time pursuing Flynn Churchill and being pursued in turn by the repulsive Philip Elton.
Then, of course, she cannot resist interfering in the love life of her bubble-headed PA, Harriet Smith, and also has to deal with her own occasionally uncontrollable envy of beautiful, clever Jane Fairfax. Not to mention being impatient with dear ‘Batty’ Bates and coping with her father’s regular bouts of anxiety and hypochondria.
The story is narrated in alternating chapters by Emma and Mark - producing some wonderful moments of high comedy as they circle round one another, piling up the misunderstandings, before finally accepting their romantic fate. Archer manages to keep this spiky relationship simmering away nicely - and occasionally boiling over into some fairly raunchy encounters that would probably have shocked the novel’s original audience to the core. It’s a huge tribute to her skill that she manages to keep up the dramatic tension, despite the fact that almost all her readers will know exactly how the story ends.
I began reading The Importance of Being Emma with, it has to be said, not the highest expectations. I devoured it at one sitting. Scrumptious!
Joceline Bury
