Friday open thread: retellings

[dolorosa_12]

Welcome to the end of another working week! I'm kind of shattered, and am looking forward to a weekend with no social obligations, and lots of cooking.

This week's open thread prompt is in response to a rather disappointing book, which happened to be a retelling of a work of classic literature (I'll say more about it later when I do my Sunday post wrapping up the week's reading). I gave it a 3-star rating, and on reflection feel that that's being overly generous. There are a couple of reasons why it failed as a retelling, and many more why it failed as a work of fiction in general, but in any case, it got me thinking about retellings, and what makes them work or not.

Therefore, the prompt is: tell me about a retelling that succeeded for you — and why — or tell me about a retelling that failed for you, and why.

I'm specifically interested in retellings rather than adaptations. There can be a shift in medium (the book I'm talking about is a retelling of a stage play), but it needs to do more than just make a broadly identical new version of an older work. If it helps: Clueless is a retelling of Emma, whereas Mamma Mia! the film is an adaptation of the Mamma Mia! musical.

Comments

[yarnofariadne]

I kind of answered this question in an essay I hope might be of interest - I wrote it as I was re-releasing some of my own retellings so an element of it is self-promo, but I wanted to talk about what I value in retellings, what makes them work for me, and what shapes my ethos in approaching them myself.

[dolorosa_12]

That is a really good essay — and I completely agree with you that the central relationships in Cinderella are between the Cinderella figure, and the older women in her life (the dead mother, the fairy godmother, and the stepmother), rather than between Cinderella and the prince.