Emma, a modern retelling, by Alexander McCall Smith

As a follow up to the reading the original Emma, I read this very successful retelling.  Like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible, a 21^st century Pride and Prejudice, McCall Smith captures the wit and liveliness of Austen’s prose and the social complexities of her plot, but gives Emma a few deft and amusing spins of his own.  The reader gets a more complete back-story to Emma’s childhood and her father’s early widowhood, which is covered in just a few early pages in the original.  I particularly liked that Mr. Woodhouse becomes a more well-rounded and real character in the modern book.  Harriet Smith, too, will surprise.  Thoroughly entertaining.  As an aside, I had only read the first of McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and had no idea that he was such an industrious writer, with 100+ books (including scholarly works) to his name, many in continuing series and some even for children.  Where he found time to be professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and an international expert in bioethics, I have no idea.   361 pp.