All about retellings

A contributor to BookRiot makes the case for reading retellings or watching film adaptations before getting to the actual original work.

As a young teen, I was bookish and a bit of an overachiever but I don’t think even I would have made it through Jane Eyre the first time I picked it up at 14 if I hadn’t already seen the adaptation starring Charlotte Gainsbourg (and a young Anna Paquin!). It was so dense! And the first hundred pages were so boring! Of course, I see that book differently now, but viewing movie adaptations first, especially BBC productions, are what got me through my first read of many classics, including Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and more.

Once I figured out in college that (sometimes) watching an adaptation or reading a retelling of a classic made it easier for me to get through the classic, I sought out a lot of retellings. Sometimes, this resulted in me picking up the classic for myself. Sometimes not. And that’s okay! Maybe I’ll circle back around in the future, but in the meantime, I’m just glad to have added to my understanding of classic literature, albeit in a roundabout way. (Tirzah Price)

Another contributor to BookRiot discusses how retellings always seem to be based on the same books.

There’s more than one way to tell a story, which is why I think readers are so drawn to retellings. It’s a way for us to examine a story we love from a different perspective and fall in love with it all over again. Or at the very least, find out something new about it.

But let’s be real. It seems like some classic stories have been retold to death. I’ve read two Jane Eyre retellings this year alone, and at this point, I think “Pride and Prejudice retellings” should just be its own literary genre. [...]

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

When it comes to Brontë retellings, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre seems to have all the fun. But guess what? Jane Eyre is not Charlotte Brontë’s only novel. And guess what else? There are two other Brontë siblings who have also written stories worth retelling.

While my favorite novel of all time is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, I will refrain from requesting a retelling of it for a few reasons. Most importantly, there are already retellings of Wuthering Heights out there. But they’re just not that great? And I’m wondering if I would just feel that way about any retelling of that novel because it’s so close to my heart. So for personal reasons, we’re leaving Wuthering Heights out of the equation.

Moving on to Anne Brontë, the oft forgotten but equally talented Brontë sister. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a feminist masterpiece whose themes and characters would perfectly fit in a contemporary retelling of this story. Readers would champion a contemporary version of Helen Graham fleeing from her abusive husband and setting out to build a life of her own. Honestly, very few changes would have to be made to make this story make sense in contemporary times. Sadly, people still gossip and speculate about single women, and abusive, toxic relationships still exist. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a story contemporary readers need! (Emily Martin)

Agreed.

The Wall Street Journal reviews John Williams: Collected Novels and here's how the review ends:

Is there such a thing as the “perfect” novel? Probably not, and it is questionable whether readers want such a quality. Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” “The Fixer” by Bernard Malamud, Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea,” “The Magus” by John Fowles: these and many other novels of the mid-1960s glory in the elasticity of the form.  It was a great era for fiction in English, and is now revised to include the work of John Williams. (James Campbell)

Aventuras na história (Brazil) recommends reading Wuthering Heights, and other classic novels, on your Kindle.