Humans love to reimagine the familiar—if we didn’t, there wouldn’t be so many reboots. But some reimaginings are just a little extra sparkly. Here’s a lucky seven set that’s sure to please the classics-lover in you (or a friend) who’s in the mood for a sharp and compelling twist….
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
Hwaet! You’ve probably read Beowulf (or at least part of it) at some point during your school years. Maybe you enjoyed it, maybe you couldn’t get into it, maybe it produced a lifelong love affair with Old English, and you take every opportunity to school friends and family on the proper recitation. Whatever you think of the epic ballad, you owe it to yourself to entertain a different perspective on the story.
Headley’s novel recasts Herot Hall as a suburban gated community where two mothers—a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—fight to protect those they love. For Willa Herot, the suburbs are a paradise—she flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. But just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren and his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide.
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The Mere Wife
Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett
Have you ever thought that Shakespeare’s work could use a little more queerness? The comedies in particular would be way more interesting if all the participants involved in romantic shenanigans weren’t assumed straight. (All those gender-flipping disguises in Twelfth Night pretty much proves this on principle…)
Well, here’s another possibility—what if, after the events of The Tempest, Miranda found herself not in Naples, happily wed to Ferdinand, but instead was dragged back to Milan by her father Prospero. Left in her father’s dark and foreboding castle, Miranda is surrounded by hostile servants who treat her like a ghost—until she meets Dorothea, who has a charismatic magic all her own. Together with her new companion, Miranda tests the confines of her world, which at times feels just as small as the lonely island where she was raised. Get your mask for the ball and dive right in for an engrossing tale that charms and chills by turns.
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Miranda in Milan
Watson and Holmes: A Study in Black by Karl Bollers
There have been countless reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson over the ages, but that just makes it more fun when an author really pushes them outside their usual boundaries as characters.
One such take is Watson and Holmes by Karl Bollers, which envisions our sleuths as African American men living in modern day Harlem, New York City. Watson works at an inner city clinic, a vet of the Afghanistan war, and when a strange case comes up in his emergency room, he meets a local P.I. named Holmes and forms an unlikely partnership. With vibrant art from Rick Leonardi, and a story that deftly sets Holmes in a brand new city, this is a perfect new twist for Sherlockians everywhere…
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Watson and Holmes: A Study in Black
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
Mary Shelley changed the world of storytelling forever when she wrote Frankenstein—a tale about a doctor, his creation, and the question of how far science may go in its pursuits to decipher the known universe. But as all great stories, it begs just as many questions as it entertains.
Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad considers the construction of a monster from the perspective of a scavenger living in an occupied Baghdad, Iraq. Hadi takes body parts he finds and stitches them together in the hope that the government will count a whole corpse as a person, and bury it properly. Instead, he creates a monster who needs human flesh to live, starting with the flesh of guilty. The monster cannot be killed by modern weaponry, and begins to terrorize the city in this terrifying tale full of dark humor and a glimpse into the life of modern-day Iraq.
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Frankenstein in Baghdad
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
A good fairy tale retelling makes something staid and comforting and perhaps a little rote into a fresh and exciting new journey. With Cinderella, you always think you know what you’re getting into—mean stepmother and stepsisters, meeting the prince at the ball, and of course the glass slipper—but what happens when you inject a bit of science fiction into the story?
Marissa Meyer’s tale unfolds in New Beijing and introduces readers to Cinder, a cyborg who works as a mechanic to support her stepmother Adri and two stepsisters. Cinder’s relationship with her stepmother—strained at the best of times—falls apart completely after one of her sisters falls ill with “Blue Fever” after accompanying Cinder to a junkyard. In retaliation, Adri “volunteers” Cinder for plague research, kicking off a chain of events that entangles Cinder in an intergalactic mystery alongside Prince Kai—and yes, it includes a dramatic set piece at a fabulous ball. If you like your fairy tales sprinkled with a healthy heap of space opera goodness, you should definitely grab the Lunar Chronicles today.
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Cinder
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
While H.P. Lovecraft’s realm of cosmic, gothic horror and has fueled imaginations for over a century, it is often difficult to reconcile a love of Cthulhu with much of the racism present in his stories. Thankfully, there are many narratives popping up in recent years that are working to remedy these issues, combining Lovecraftian horror with characters and concepts that are voiceless in much of his work.
Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom rewrites Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”, and it packs a punch that no one should miss. When Charles Thomas Tester is engaged to deliver an old occult book to a sorceress, he does what he must to get paid and continue on. But the Old Ones aren’t through with him just yet.
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The Ballad of Black Tom
Circe by Madeline Miller
Those who know the mythological Circe probably remember her best from Homer’s The Odyssey, where she ensnares many of Osysseus’s men in her mansion that sits in the middle of a wood. The hero gets advice from Hermes on how best to evade her magical wiles, then stays for a year, gets some helpful advice, and leaves.
But the Circe of Madeline Miller’s eponymous novel is no pitstop for grander stories. Instead, the goddess is banished to her deserted island for developing her skills in witchcraft, a threat to Zeus and the other gods. From her island, she gains more power and crosses paths with many famous figures of mythology. Having incurred anger from men and gods alike, she must make a decision as to where she belongs and how she will live her life as a woman of singular power.
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Circe
Originally published in March 2019.
Going back a ways; much love for Saberhagen’s “The Holmes Dracula Tapes”.
One from way back: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, which retells the story of Eros and Psyche from the viewpoint of the jealous sister, and in a very Christian way (perception, reassessment, and repentance are huge factors).
The late Julian May’s Pliocene-Milieu series is a loose recasting of Paradise Lost with Marc Remillard as Satan/Lucifer.
And don’t forget Sheri Tepper’s Beauty, which retells Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White all in one beautiful go.
I’ve seen a number of interviews with LaValle where he’s been asked about Lovecraft. I haven’t seen anyone ask him about Robert E. Howard. I’d like to know his thoughts since the most hateful character in Black Tom is a cop or private detective from Texas named Ervin Howard.
I adored the Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall which is sort of Holmes and Watson. But better!
A lot of T Kingfisher’s (Ursula Vernon) earlier pieces are retellings: Bryony and Roses (Beauty and the Beast), The Raven and the Reindeer (The Snow Queen), or The Seventh Bride (Bluebeard). There’s also a Snow White take involving wild boars, and a Cinderella where she really only wants to pick up gardening tips…
If you liked Madeline Miller’s Circe (which I did, so so so much), then make sure you also read The Song of Achilles, which is her retelling of The Odyssey. She also wrote a short story, Galatea, which is Pygmalion from the statue’s point of view.
And while I have no idea what she’s doing now, I can’t wait for her next book.
Duplicate post, sorry
Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey – a poignant, beautifully written take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Niven & Pournelle’s Inferno.
Of course, much of space opera is a Hornblower pastiche.
Melmoth, by Sarah Perry, is a recasting of a nineteenth-century Gothic novel, Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin. Perry’s Melmoth wanders the world bearing witness in times of great sorrow and violence; the twentieth century gives her an abundance of material.
And to continue the Homeric theme, Derek Walcott’s Omeros is a verse epic loosely based on the Iliad and set primarily on the island of St. Lucia, “the Helen of the West Indies” for the way it was fought over.
Much of the land of Fillory in The Magicians is a deliberate subversion of Narnia.
And while we’re on the subjects of alternate-Shakespeare and New York, there’s Prince of Cats, a graphic novel, by Ronald Wimberly, which puts Tybalt (from Romeo and Juliet) in 1980’s New York.
Harry Turtledove’s Ruled Britannia features Shakespeare in a world where the Spanish Armada succeeded; Spain rules England.
Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls deserves to be on here even if the fantastic elements are on the fringes and retells the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis, the girl who was to be Achilles’ war prize only to be claimed by Agamemnon setting off the whole of the story.
I would also suggest Walking To Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is also a Grendel retelling from the POV of astronaut Gary Rendell. Think Grendel crossed with Lovecraft.
Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest assumes that Shakespeare is the Great Historian. All his plays are historically accurate. Titania and Oberon are as real as Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. Since Denmark in Hamlet’s day had striking clocks and cannon, the industrial revolution got started early. By the English Civil War, Rupert of the Rhine could hitch a ride on a steam powered railroad. Then he set out on a quest to find Prospero’s book of spells.
what about Tanith Lee’s Tales From The Sisters Grimmer, which modernizes some fairy tales such as Cinderella
Mercedes Lackey rewrites fairy tales in her Elemental Masters series. They include Beauty and the Beast (The Fire Rose) Sleeping Beauty (The Gates of Sleep) Puss in Boots (Reserved for the Cat) Rapunzel (From a High Tower) Tam Lin (Home from the Sea) a host of others.
Also her dreadful version of The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Steadfast). Which was dull in the original and a dead loss when Donavan sang it. What is it about this turkey that they won’t let it die?
Gordy Dickson’s The Dragon and the George.
Anna Russel’s analysis of The Ring of the Nibelung. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07E5sLsJQe0
I’d forgotten about The Dragon and the George.
But that, in turn, reminds me of the Victorian dragons of Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw, which is based on Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope. In Tooth and Claw, Trollope’s themes– family, gender, power, money — are illustrated quite literally; to quote its author: “It’s a sentimental Victorian novel about dragons who eat each other.”