Another Side to the Story: Parallel Plots
Revisionist Versions of Well Known Books and Characters
Have you ever been curious to find out what Bertha Mason was thinking all of that time locked in the attic? Have you ever wondered what Jacob Marley was like when he was alive? Surely Sherlock Holmes couldn't have been as smart as Watson said. If you have read a novel, and thought that there must be more to the tale than this, these books are for you. These novels and stories will make you look at the original source in a whole new light.
5. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
This is the most well known revision, largely because of the popular Broadway musical and because the book has taken on a cult following of it's own. As many knows, it tells the tale of the supposed Wicked Witch of the West called Elphaba. The book recounts her abandoned childhood, her schooldays with fellow student Galinda, later Glinda the Good Witch of the North, and her fight against the Wizard's tyranny.
This book besides portraying the leaders of OZ as weak and ineffectual also has a lot to say about animal rights, and people fighting for their own sovereignty, personified by the Munchkins. Elphaba becomes a memorable character through her intelligence, her observation, and her analytical nature on such questions as what is evil.
4. The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart- This story takes the final days of Camelot on their head by telling from the point of view of Mordred, Arthur's bastard son/nephew. Many stories have taken alternate views of Camelot and some have spoken through Mordred, but none have portrayed it's lead character with such wit, cynicism, and at the same time affection for his father.
The book follows Mordred's relationships with his father, Arthur, whom he both loves and hates equally, his aunt Morgan Le Fey, whom he distrusts but is drawn to, and his mother and half-brothers whom he derides. He is portrayed as someone who strives to do well by his legendary father but is undone by others' perceptions and his own callous avaricious nature.
3. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys-A well known classic take on another story, his time focusing on the "Mad Woman in the Attic" from Jane Eyre. Bertha Mason, Rochester's first wife,called Antoinette Cosway here, is a displaced Creole driven to insanity by the callousness of her husband and the insanity of her mother.
While taking a very sympathetic view towards the first Mrs. Rochester, a very passionate, fiery individual, it also gives a real world setting to the end of slavery in the West Indies and the idea of one person owning another. Antoinette and Jane become parallels through their unhappy childhood and love for Rochester personified in their scenes where they see each other as neither sees the other as a real woman. As we know in Bronte's novel Jane refers to Antoinette as "a creature", Antoinette is equally as dismissive about her replacement calling her a "ghost."
2. My Sherlock Holmes edited by Michael Kurland- The goal with this anthology was to look at Sherlock Holmes through others' eyes besides his own and his frequent friend/collaborator and it works. We are shown Holmes through the eyes of Watson's first and second wife, Wiggins one of the Baker Street Irregulars, Inspector Lestrade, and Professor Moriarty among others. Holmes is sometimes portrayed as intelligent and observant as he is Doyle's work, other times bumbling and naive.
Some of the best stories in the anthology are "Call Me Wiggins" by Norman Schreiber in which a middle-aged Wiggins recalls how Holmes took a fatherly approach towards the young lad and supported him in Oxford where they get involved in a mystery involving friends of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson AKA Lewis Carroll; "The Incident of the Impecunious Chevalier" by Richard Lupoff in which Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin has more than a few words to say about a scenery grabbing detective who once described Dupin as "a very inferior fellow;" and "The Adventure of the Celestial Snows" by George Alec Effinger where one of Holmes' clients, Sir Reginald Musgrave, of the Doyle story, "The Musgrave Ritual" fills in the blanks on Holmes' college days and how his addiction to cocaine and his dark personality emerged.
1. Marley's Ghost by Mark Hazard Osmun- When we meet Jacob Marley, Ebenezer's Scrooge's late partner in A Christmas Carol, he had been dead for seven years. This book recounts Marley's lonely and bitter life and creepy afterlife. Jacob Marley's transformation from a gifted and sweet boy to a hardened man angry at society and God is meaningful and understanding.
The early days of the coal miners that young Marley works in are graphic in their scenes of deaths of miners and the greed of managers who could care less. Particularly interesting, is the spiritual journey which Marley takes after death where he encounters a bevy of pagan and Christian spirits including three very familiar spirits that make his afterlife an intense yet mesmerizing one.
Other interesting parallel books to read-
- Jackanapes by T. John Ward
- Finn by John Clinch
- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
- The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
- Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- I am Morgan Le Fey and I am Mordred by Nancy Springer
- Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCraig
- Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll
- Canongate Myth Stories by various authors
- Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard
- Grendel by John Gardner
As well as many of the revisionist fairy tale stories written and edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.
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