The very beginning of The Bride of Northanger, by Diana Birchell, has Henry Tilney admitting to his bride that actually, yes, the family really is cursed and the curse is on the wives of the eldest son of each generation. Sweet Catherine, newly practical and rational, ignores this because Henry is the second son and they’re not actually going to live full-time at Northanger Abbey anyway.
But this time, the creepy old house really is full of gothic dread. There’s the family curse and some truly insufferable flesh-and-blood relatives, not to mention sightings of ghostly grey lady, an anonymous warning letter left for Catherine, medical mysteries, insane relatives, and all kind of creepy things. At one point, young bride Catherine is informed that family tradition requires a member of the family to stay with a newly-deceased relative, which means she’s about to spend the night alone with a corpse. There’s also a death by impalement on architectural decor, a truly gothic way to go.
In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen flips the Gothic novel, setting up hints of ghostly activity and then giving a mundane explanation. Here, Diana Birchall flips it back, putting a more mature Catherine into an extremely Gothic horror story, with ghosts and curses and imprisonment. But it’s also a reversal of modern haunted-house horror movie, since it’s the wife, not the husband, who ignores any evidence of supernatural disturbance in the house, looking for a rational explanation and insisting that everything is fine.
The Bride of Northanger is a horror novel homage with a twist that plays on what readers expect from a haunted-house heroine. Janeite readers can’t help thinking Austen would approve.
Thanks for including me in the Bride of Northanger Blog Tour!
- October 28 My Jane Austen Book Club (Interview)
- October 28 Austenprose—A Jane Austen Blog (Review)
- October 28 vvb32 Reads (Spotlight)
- October 29 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide of Life (Guest Blog)
- October 29 From Pemberley to Milton (Excerpt)
- October 30 Drunk Austen (Interview)
- October 30 Silver Petticoat Review (Excerpt)
- October 31 Jane Austen’s World (Review)
- November 01 So Little Time… (Interview)
- November 01 Laura’s Reviews (Review)
- November 04 English Historical Fiction Authors (Guest Blog)
- November 04 Confessions of a Book Addict (Spotlight)
- November 05 More Agreeably Engaged (Review)
- November 05 Vesper’s Place (Review)
- November 06 Jane Austen in Vermont (Interview)
- November 06 Diary of an Eccentric (Interview)
- November 07 All Things Austen (Spotlight)
- November 07 A Bookish Way of Life (Review)
- November 07 Let Them Read Books (Excerpt)
- November 08 Babblings of a Bookworm (Review)
- November 08 vvb32 Reads (Review)
- November 11 My Jane Austen Book Club (Review)
- November 11 Reading the Past (Spotlight)
- November 12 Jane Austen’s World (Interview)
- November 12 The Calico Critic (Excerpt)
- November 13 The Book Rat (Review)
- November 13 Austenesque Reviews (Review)
- November 14 Fangs, Wands, & Fairy Dust (Review)
- November 14 The Fiction Addiction (Review)
- November 15 My Love for Jane Austen (Spotlight)
- November 15 Scuffed Slippers and Wormy Books (Review)
I like that you mention that it is usually the wife “who ignores any evidence of supernatural disturbance in the house…” I enjoyed that everything is flipped in this continuation. Austen would approve of that irony. Thanks for the great review of a fun read Meg.
Laurel Ann Nattress recently posted…A Preview of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, Volume III, by Collins Hemingway
[…] of this one will also enjoy Disenchanted, a fun P&P retelling with magic, and The Bride of Northanger, another variation where Catherine gets to see some gothic […]