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Inspired by the Classics |
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Each of these contemporary novels takes inspiration from a literary classic. Plan a series of book club discussions reading a classic one month and the work it inspired the next.
Rita Tull, Davis Library
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The Double Bind by Chris A. Bohjalian
Published 2007 by Shaye Areheart Books
Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
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Jacket Notes:
From the bestselling author of "Midwives" and "Before You Know Kindness" comes a psychological novel of obsession and consequences. When college sophomore Laural Estabook is attacked while riding her bike through Vermont's back roads, her life is forever changed. 12 photos. More...
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Finn
by Jon Clinch
Published 2007 by Random House
Inspired by Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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Jacket Notes:
In this masterful debut novel, Clinch takes readers on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own. More...
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The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
Published 1998 by Farrar Straus Giroux
Inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
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Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Published 2007 by Dial Press
Inspired by Charles Dicken's Great Expectations.
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Mrs. de Winter
by Susan Hill
Published 1993 by William Morrow & Company
Inspired by Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.
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Jacket Notes:
From Library Journal
What happened to Maxim de Winter and his second wife after Manderley burned? This suspenseful "completion" of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca begins with the couple's return to England, following a ten-year, self-imposed exile, for the funeral of Maxim's sister Beatrice. In a voice true to the original story, Hill's Mrs. de Winter chronicles Rebecca's continuing shadow on their life: a mysterious wreath bearing a card with the initial "R" is discovered near Beatrice's grave, and unwelcome visitors include Jack Favell, who has visions of blackmail, and Mrs. Danvers, who seeks revenge. The narrator's happiness with Maxim is threatened by his first wife's invasive presence. Can she protect him from the past, or will Rebecca's murder be avenged?
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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
Published 2005 by Penguin Press
Inspired by E. M. Forster's Howards End.
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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
Published 2008 by Ecco
Inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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Jacket Notes:
This riveting saga of an American family captures the deep and ancient alliance between humans and dogs, and the power of fate through one boy's epic journey into the wild. More...
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Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story
by Rachel Kadish
Published 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company
Inspired by Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
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Jacket Notes:
Tracy Farber, 33, happily single and headed for tenure at a major university, sets out to prove that happiness and the search for happiness can be, must be, a complicated mission. Little does she know that her best proof will come when she meets George, who will challenge all of her old assumptions. More...
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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Published 1998 by W. W. Norton & Company
Inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
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Jacket Notes:
Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon the publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay for her ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak English home.
In this best-selling novel Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
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The Wind Done Gone
by Alice Randall
Published 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company
Inspired by Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.
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Jacket Notes:
In a brilliant act of literary invention, Randall revisits the world of "Gone With the Wind" from an African-American point of view as Scarlett's mulatto half-sister--beautiful and brown--gets to tell "her" story. More...
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