Emma and the Vampires
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
What better place than pale England to hide a secret society of gentlemen vampires?
In this hilarious retelling of Jane Austen's Emma, screenwriter Wayne Josephson casts Mr. Knightley as one of the most handsome and noble of the gentlemen village vampires. Blithely unaware of their presence, Emma, who imagines she has a special gift for matchmaking, attempts to arrange the affairs of her social circle with delightfully disastrous results. But when her dear friend Harriet Smith declares her love for Mr. Knightley, Emma realizes she's the one who wants to stay up all night with him. Fortunately, Mr. Knightley has been hiding a secret deep within his unbeating heart—his (literal) undying love for her… A brilliant mash-up of Jane Austen and the undead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two conflicting concepts and a poor sense of period manners and terminology prevent the latest Jane Austen mash-up from fulfilling its comedic potential. Dangerous bands of vagrant vampires prove a constant threat to the stake-wielding young ladies of Highbury, so it is less than credible that the clever but occasionally oblivious Miss Emma Woodhouse and her friends would still be unable to recognize that local gentlemen possessed of pale skin, a fear of sunlight, and drooling fangs are, in fact, blood-drinkers. The joke of romantic lead Mr. Knightley and his fellows as ravenous but proper gentlemen vampires is well-conceived and occasionally combined very cleverly with Austen's original prose and characters, such as Emma's father's dislike of eating. However, calling the wild vampires vulgar is an unconvincing distinction when the supposed gentlemen scream and bellow, the respectable Emma discusses lust, and a matronly schoolteacher shouts, "Kill the bastards!" While Austen's tale has been effectively trimmed, the added passages are often poorly integrated, and the tonal shifts from the vampires-in-the-gentry sections to the gentry-as-vampire-slayers moments are disconcerting. The latter seem to belong to a different mash-up altogether, and in pursuing both jokes at once, the tale succeeds at neither.
