Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters by Mallory Ortberg
My enjoyment rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hangover rating: 3 (I've re-read several "texts" since I finished the book)
Source: ARC received from the publisher -- I was not compensated in any other way for my review.
Genre: Humor non-fiction
Objectionable material: Multiple uses of the f-bomb
If your favorite literary characters (like Lizzie Bennett, Jane Eyre, Sherlock Holmes) could text -- what would their 21st century conversations sound/read like?
Fortunately, Mallory Ortberg has given us an extremely clever and humorous glimpse at the perceived texts of these classic, fictional icons.
Some of my favorite exchanges were:
Sherlock Holmes & Watson: "there's only one thing we're missing...only one thing we need that will help us solve this case...Cocaine, Watson....scads of it..."
Edgar Allan Poe: "...where do I even start...there's a heart in the floor and it will not shut upppp...but that's not the main thing, there's a cat with one eye that keeps calling me a murderer..."
The best sequences were Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre (duh!) and Gone With the Wind. (You'll have to read those for yourself).
Unfortunately, for me, nearly half of the texts/references were from literary works that I'd either not read or had long forgotten. So the text exchanges for Plato, Circe, Rene Descartes and others were totally and completely lost on me. A sad reflection of my feeble mind and education.
This is, however, a fun, quirky volume that will keep you highly entertained.
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