Sense & Sensibility (A modern tale) – Joanna Trollope Free Audiobook

Written by Joanna Trollope
Read by Kate Reading
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: The Austen Project, book 1
Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 10-29-13
Language: English
Publisher: HarperAudio

From Joanna Trollope, one of the most insightful chroniclers of family life writing fiction today, comes a contemporary retelling of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s classic novel of love, money, and two very different sisters.

John Dashwood promised his dying father that he would take care of his half sisters. But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate. When she descends upon Norland Park, the three Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—are faced with the realities of a cold world and the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.

With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.

Reimagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel’s romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change….

Review..
In 2013, as the first in a projected series in which Austen’s novels will be updated by contemporary authors, Trollope is a good (and bankable) choice to lead off. With almost 20 novels to her credit, she certainly outdistances our Jane, at least in terms of quantity, and her satires on British society have invited comparison with Austen in the past. Trollope’s take on Austen’s Sense and Sensibility hews closely to the original plot, with some characters, e.g., youngest sister Margaret, blossoming in the retelling. While some equivalents (the gift of a horse becomes the gift of a motor car) seem almost too pat, the satire directed at these Thames Valley girls (at one point Elinor huffily defriends Edward Ferrars) and their elders largely hits the sweet spot.

VERDICT This will more than satisfy Trollope fans as well as most Austen devotees; with its sprightly mix of the old and new told in streamlined prose (most of the paragraphs might be tweeted), this twice-told tale highlights the issue of what has changed in 200 years, and what has remained constant.

The project was not considered sucessful. Other three books in the Project are uploaded:
Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice – Curtis Sittenfeld, Northanger Abbey – Val McDermid, Emma – Alexander McCall Smith