FIRST POST!

I thought I should devote my very first blogger post to discussion of the recent ITV adaptation of Northanger Abbey.

Andrew Davis, the man with the midas touch when it comes to period drama adaptations, has done it again! It was much better than the Billie Piper ITV Mansfield Park adaptation shown a week before, and thoroughly more entertaining than the last BBC adaptation of Northanger Abbey in 1990 which was just strange.

What's more, I had an epiphany similar to that my friend Dee had when she went to watch Marie Antoinette. I realised that I was Catherine Morland, or rather I could have become just like Catherine given the same circumstances. I've never identified this closely with a Jane Austen character. Throughout the film, I was gasping: "she's me!", "that's exactly what I would have done". You see, Catherine and I are both naive, eager to please characters with an overactive imagination. We've both lived a sheltered, relatively comfortable (albeit plain) life. We both like witty sarcastic men with a fine taste in muslin. Of course, the 20th/21st century has rendered me more cynical, more bohemian, more FTW than Catherine . But our spirit and soul are essentially the same.

BTW, I should mention that I've never read Northanger Abbey, only watched the BBC version to which I paid half attention and thought really unsexy. In fact, it put me off from reading the book. So that's why this revelation has come at this late stage in life.

Do you have a literary twin?