Book #35: The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

This is a modern rewrite of Jane Eyre, and although I've never REALLY liked Jane Eyre in the first place, I thought this sounded interesting. Turns out it wasn't, really, basically for the same reasons I don't like the original. But I still pushed through it because I felt dumb putting it down after reading halfway through it, and I'm glad I did, because the best part was last 1/5 of the book.

Like Jane, Gemma Hardy was raised by her aunt and uncle, but when her uncle died, her aunt sends her away to a boarding school as a working student and basically relinquishes any interest in her. When the school shuts down, Gemma gets a job as a nanny at Blackbird Hall in the Orkneys of Scotland, where the whole falling-in-love-and-then-running-away thing happens. The best part of the book happens after she gets back on her feet, with a job as a nanny for a cute boy and having made some friends, and she goes to ICELAND to try to find some family (because that is where she was born and where her parents died).

I never understood why Mr. Rochester falls in love with Jane in the original (and vice versa--how is he lovable? There's no compelling reason there!) and the same applies here. There's seriously no believable reason for why Mr. Sinclair should fall in love with Gemma. He's over twice her age! She's only 18! Also, I don't see why she feels like she has to run away altogether from him--it's not like he had a secret wife hidden in his attic like in the original; he just did some things like twenty years ago that she didn't agree with. But I really liked the people who ended up befriending her and her life that she had afterwards, and especially her trip to Iceland where she finally meets her aunt and learns about herself and her parents. I loved reading about Iceland--especially because I actually WENT to the exact little villages she writes about and did the same trip. It was nice that Gemma ends up with a happy ending after being completely alone for all of her life, although I don't know why it had to be with Mr. Too-Old-For-You Sinclair.