Emma in Love

Wow. Trippy. Allow me to summarise the two hours I wasted in reading this book with an equation: Emma Tennant + Jane Austen's Emma x illegal substances = Emma In Love. What was the woman on? Never the most creditable 'continuation' writer, Tennant must have far surpassed her previous efforts by seemingly penning this novella in a chemical-induced haze. Crazy!

Jane Austen's Emma is my favourite of all her novels, yet I was not offended or disturbed by Emma Tennant's treatment. Amused, somewhat; bemused, definitely. Nothing makes sense. All the characters are reduced to caricatures, which Austen never created. Emma is childlike, wanting to 'remain a loved daughter all her days rather than a wife', and still best friends with Harriet. Mr Knightley is 'dogmatic, petty' and 'magisterial', not to mention suddenly rather bizarrely 'slightly deficient of stature'. With Isabella conveniently dispatched after her father, John Knightley has 'espoused his work, now his wife is gone', and constantly talks in legal jargon. Miss Bates is apparently suffering from Tourettes. And despite repeatedly referring back to Austen's original text - from the paraphrasing of the opening line ('handsome, married and rich') to Frank's London haircut, gifts of pork and apples to Miss Bates, and Frank Churchill arriving just in time to fix Mrs Bates' glasses - Emma Tennant's Highbury is a parallel universe where Frank jilted Jane Fairfax at the altar, married an heiress from Yorkshire with a cross-dressing brother, and Mr Knightley and Mrs Weston had a love child who grew up to be French lesbian. Absolutely surreal, and all this in less than 250 pages, even with large text and blank pages between the chapters. This isn't really a novel at all, much less 'Jane Austen's Emma continued', as the subtitle claims; it's an exercise in perverse ramblings, full of cribbed material, inconsistencies, and all the subtlety of a romance novel. Emma is so sexually repressed by the thought of consummating her marriage to Mr Knightley - even four years down the road - that she sees her husband as 'no more - and no less - than a father', 'friends; they were brother and sister', and 'reserved - even disgustingly so', and promptly falls in love with the 'two beautiful visitors to Highbury'. Unfortunately for Emma, Frank's beautiful brother-in-law likes to wear floaty white gowns and rouge, but the mysterious French beauty staying with Jane Fairfax at the vicarage also has her 'shining, dark orbs' on Mrs Knightley.

Are the rumours about Highbury true? Will the mistress of Donwell take a lover? Is Mr Knightley up to a threesome on the island? Why is Jane Fairfax wearing a diamond tiara in the garden? Which expletive will Miss Bates say next? Emma Tennant's sequel to Emma is not to be missed! ( )