The last few years have seen some bold re-imaginings. Since Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there have been numerous offerings of mash-ups, reboots and literary semi-piracy. Hot on the heels of the BBC’s Death Comes to Pemberley (based on the novel by P.D. James, and reviewed for Criticks by Marina Cano-Lopez), Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey, an updated take on the Jane Austen novel of the same name, is one of the more academically and critically interesting adaptations. Like Death, the new Northanger is written by an author better known for her original crime novels, but who also remains faithful to the original source material. Also, like its predecessors, this novel reflects a rising interest in the re-evaluation of literature as part of a post-postmodern revisionism. It stages a return to certain timeless aspects of cultural expression as a response to postmodern irony. This reboot of a pseudo-satire of a system of Gothic interiority is an important examination of current reading trends; it also reflects on past traditions and well-loved literary creations, as well as aspects of literary legacies both culturally-specific and universally important to constructions of identity.

In both versions of Northanger Abbey, protagonist Catherine “Cat” Morland, a young woman, voracious reader, and teenage innocent gifted with a wild imagination (one which both aids and prevents true readings of the people around her), navigates her way through scenes of social unease, friendships and  romantic relationships, and personal maturations. More specifically, she learns to differentiate ‘real’ life from fiction, particularly the Gothic novels which constitute most of her library, though some practical problems do take on a rather Gothicized edge as the novel progresses. Fans of the original Northanger, a complex novel which at its most basic level is a parody of the then popular Gothic fictions of authors such as Ann Radcliffe and other ‘horrid’ novelists, will find that everything has changed, and nothing – Ann Radcliffe has been replaced by Stephanie Meyer, ‘low-brow’ Matthew Monk Lewis by violent video games, persecuting aristocratic villains by dangerously sexy vampires, letters by texts, and Bath by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Like many such novels, McDermid’s Northanger Abbey suffers somewhat in attempting to be both naturalistic and faithful to the original. Prose is slightly stilted and the dialogue is sometimes jarringly awkward, yet not unapproachable. In fact the true place of accessibility for the reader is not so much in the core dialogue of the characters, but rather in the exchange of literary references which unites the reading audience with the ‘reading’ characters, the self-aware references that suggest the universality of the books that define identity. Bibliophiles will find it hard not to be equally amused when both Twilight and Jane Eyre are referenced, or feel that sweet ping of nostalgia when Catherine first experiences Dracula (via books-on-tape). Therein lies the real source of McDermid’s meta-exploration and it is indeed the awareness of reading a book about reading books that makes this book so critical and entertaining for both the casual and academic reader.

For, despite their differences, the core themes of both the original and re-boot of Northanger are the same – Cat is still some kind of heroine, and it is clear, both in retroactively viewing the original material and in experiencing how smoothly adaptable the story is to modern re-touching, that readers, and in this case particularly the young female consumers of popular fiction, will find value in what they choose to attach value to, even if the work in question is not widely considered high literature. They place themselves, to a certain extent, in the role of heroine, and the realm of fiction, while not a guidebook for day-to-day choices, will inescapably affect constructions of ‘real’ life. The idea that such complex inventions of identity can ultimately be both destructive and redemptive is not only the aspect that unites both Northanger Abbeys but also the aspect that makes Northanger the ideal Austen work to update – it is anchored firmly in a time and place, yet it maintains its relevancy without faltering.

It’s difficult to accept that any teenage girl in this cynical age could seriously believe her crush is one of the undead – but there is a self-aware functionality at the centre of Val McDermid’s project, where literary boundaries become personalized spaces and in which ‘classic’ literature is renewed and literature itself becomes something requiring active engagement and multi-layered response from the reader. At one point Cat defiantly asserts, defending her interest in fictive vampires over her mother’s love of T.S. Eliot: “reading the Twilight novels makes me think… Just because you’re not interesting in thinking about the same things doesn’t mean it’s worthless.” Indeed, McDermid fully realizes in her adaptation the meta-potentiality of conscious literary re-imaginings, and the reader of this novel may perhaps finds themselves re-evaluating their own literary experiences.

Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey is published in the UK by The Borough Press and in the US by Grove Press.