The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Yet another review from a book received from the Amazon Vine program. It seemed like for a while I was only getting the dreariest, dark, depressing books that I could barely finish. This one however was different and I did enjoy it although the author is not in the same league as Charlotte Bronte.

Introducing The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

If you love the novel Jane Eyre then you should probably love or at least enjoy this book as it is a modernized Jane Eyre story. Some incidents in the book are almost identical to what happens in Jane Eyre and others are only reminiscent. If you have never read Jane Eyre, you should still enjoy this book. It was so nice to read a novel that has a happy ending just like Jane Eyre did! I’ve had way too many books that were dark dreary books come my way lately that left me feeling depressed. So I was glad to have a happy book even though many of the events in the book are sad.

I had received a Jane Eyre DVD starring Timothy Dalton as a birthday present that unfortunately had glitches in it so I had to exchange it. This meant that when my new copy came, I had to run it to see if the new DVD ran correctly. So while reading the modern day Jane Eyre novel (The Flight of Gemma Hardy) I was seeing the Jane Eyre story unfold before my eyes and actually was reading the same part of the novel that was being shown on the screen. Rather an interesting experience. For those of you that aren’t acquainted with this particular piece of literature and don’t want to track down a copy of Jane Eyre to read, the DVD will give you a fairly good idea of the novel, although no movie can replace reading ever!

Instead of gothic England, this book took place in the 1960's, so obviously some of the previous scenes were impossible to capture in the new book. Also, how does one rewrite a top of the line novel like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or Jane Austen's novels? But, Margot Livesey did her best and shows, along with Charlotte Bronte, that when one has no money and has no friends, no matter what the era, you are sure to have trouble getting by in life.