Chrissie Elmore

After buying yet another modern sequel to a classic novel, I have decided that the answer to 'When will I ever learn?' is apparently 'never'. Although written in a style fairly sympathetic to Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian novel, I'm not really sure what the point to Chrissie Elmore's continuation is. Did she think to herself, 'North and South was merely the tip of the iceberg. Mrs Gaskell could have dragged out John and Margaret's will-they-won't-they battle of miscommunication for at least another 300 pages!' And then proceed to do just that? Elmore writes on her webpage that Gaskell was 'far from satisfied' with the romantic ending, but Gaskell actually told a friend that 'I don't feel certain that I dislike the ending as it now stands' - in other words, that John and Margaret's sudden coming together ('all smash in a moment') was enough for her.

Ironically, for those readers who disagree, this isn't the self-published sequel to satisfy frustrated imaginations either. John and Margaret do get together - obviously - but only after rehashing the clash of personalities and shared misunderstandings of Gaskell's original. The final chapter is delightful enough, with Margaret caring for John and a quiet, romantic reunion in Spain - but North and South achieved the same sense of completion, or lack thereof, in the first place. So for those who enjoyed the social themes and sexual tension in Gaskell's novel, and want to see both draaaaagggged ouuuuut, Elmore's your saviour.

Said social themes - slum housing and female mill workers, this time around - are actually the best part of the book. Chrissie Elmore has obviously done her research into Victorian society, and the formal diction of the dialogue is both 'accessible' and believable, for the most part. Any work of historical fiction that gets me Googling the factual background must be doing something right! What doesn't work so well are the author's own very 'modern' characters, Adele and Arthur Donaldson, Edmund and Jessy Potter, who are all so incredibly bland and benevolent that they don't quite fit into Gaskell's Darkshire landscape. Plus, certain parts of the story - Margaret's return to Milton, Ann Latimer, the Great Exhibition - are based more on the 2004 adaptation than the novel, which always seems a bit of a cheat to me.

One final, persnickety complaint deserves a paragraph all to itself: the absence of a competent proofreader! A few dotless i's and uncrossed t's I could overlook, but anyone who can speak and write passable English would instantly spot the mistakes peppering this novel. 'It's' and 'its' are not singular and plural forms of 'it' - one is a contraction of 'it is', the other is a possessive pronoun. Mistakes like this, which recur throughout, conspired to throw me completely out of the story in places. I wanted to practice the art of proofreading, instead of enjoying - or scratching my head as to the purpose of - the story! What a waste!… (mehr)