Review: Jane: A Retelling by Lark Watson

Jane: A Retelling by Lark Watson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Unfortunately this is a DNF for me at 10%. I am just not sure what to make of this book... On the one hand, this is described as a gothic romance retelling of Jane Eyre, and I love Jane Eyre retellings and anything gothic. But this book just didn’t do it for me. It felt flat, there was little characterisation for anyone other than the MC, and it lacked the atmospheric imagery typically found in gothic novels.

The pacing at the start seemed off to me—there’s a lot of exposition for Jane’s background in the very first chapter, which does build her character well, but it just seems too much in one go, particularly as every moment of her interview is given to us, yet in the chapters that follow we’ve got whole months passing in a page. This really disrupted the rhythm, and I’d have appreciated it a bit more if we were given more time with Jane as she settles into her new job, so we can see what it’s like, rather than just being told what happens over the course of a month. (I did love the how Jane clashed with the interviewer though, but in a quiet way.)

Linked into this, I also found there was lots of telling and not much showing. Jane’s being employed as a nanny, yet when she meets Adelia and begins nannying, we aren’t given anything to tell us about the girl from Jane’s POV, her impressions of her, or any descriptions really. Whole days pass in a single paragraph, and a page later and a whole month has passed and we know little about five-year-old Adelia or Jane’s relationship with her. What we do know about the girl is told rather than shown, such as: “But, I realized nothing would save me if I didn’t have a gift in hand as Adelia was a very materialistic girl” and it was the first time I began to get a sense of who the little girl was/what her personality is—but it didn’t grab me as the writing just seemed flat and I would’ve liked to have seen examples that proved Adelia was materialistic rather than being told it. Things like this should’ve been integrated into the story more, and I’m afraid I just didn’t connect as there’s very little about Adelia’s personality.

Instead, the language used to describe Adelia at times “others” her. Before we even meet Adelia (and in fact, we don’t get to witness an introduction with the girl) another character calls her “odd” as she doesn’t speak English. This isn’t called out by the protagonist—not even internally, which first person narrative allows for—and is just left to pass as a normal comment which in itself is problematic. It places her nationality as inferior to the other characters’ nationalities, and almost suggests the only thing worth noting as she is introduced is her otherness. There’s nothing about her personality at this point—which could’ve easily been slipped in if we’d been given a scene where the two meet.

Yet even this portrayal of Adelia as Other is not consistent, as we are given her dialogue in English and there’s very little, if anything, about her Spanish culture, except for that she’s “odd”. The protagonist is supposed to also be conversing with Adelia in Spanish, but I just didn’t believe it. Coming from a household where one of my parents would regularly speak Spanish and I knew it growing up, we’d have little Spanish phrases we’d all use (even slipping them into conversations that were otherwise spoken in English) and it would’ve been nice to see something similar as it would’ve just made it more believable—and it would’ve *shown* a bit more, which there was very little of.

By the time we get to where the gothic tropes come into play—Jane seeing a person in a window of a house that she’s told is empty—I’d unfortunately lost interest. It also didn’t help that even these scenes were basically told to readers with the exception of one or two nice images. The author could’ve really made these into atmospheric moments with lots of evocative imagery and gothic language, and I was disappointed to find this wasn’t the case.

I’m also under the impression this is a romance, but 10% into the story, and we don’t seem to have met the love interest. To me, this is another pacing issue.

So at the moment this is a DNF for me. Unfortunately, it’s just not my cup of tea.


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