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Being the resident Jane Austen person at Booklist, I’m often asked to take on reviewer duties for the slew of Austen-based books (yes, I even reviewed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). The supply of fiction inspired in one way or another by Austen seems like a bottomless cup of tea.  

So far, no other author has let loose the same impulse to retell and recycle, although Charles Dickens appears as a character in several novels (most recently, Drood by Dan Simmons, and Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold).  But are we seeing a Bronte trend?  Not long ago, I reviewed Emily’s Ghost: A Novel of the Bronte Sisters by Denise Giardina, which joins The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte by Laura Joh Rowland, The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan, and Emily’s Journal by Sarah Fermi. The latest Bronte borrowing is The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James, whose previous novel, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, was popular.

If your book group wants to explore some of the Austen and Bronte spin-offs, there are blogs that regularly review them. Try Jane Austen’s World and BronteBlog

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Good Books for Book Clubs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.