We’ve been talking a lot about retellings at JCLS, in part because many of us have Percival Everett’s James down as our favorite book of the year. We’ve got a Retelling list on our catalog, a Retelling edition of our Read This! Video series, and (as a result) staff is queued up with all sorts of retelling recommendations if you, too, are fascinated by James.
If you aren’t familiar with this title, it is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim. In doing this, Everett, a skilled satirist, dismantles the source material. While doing this he manages to make points about America, past and present. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, if you turn a retelling just right, you can blow it up. In this case, some of what Everett has done with this novel is to turn the story back on the reader, particularly on the White reader. In doing this, he makes clear that the discourse around this classic should transcend its heavy use of the n-word. Most staff who have read this have also said that it has made them want to go back and read the original, which many of us read as students and then never return to.
Meanwhile, one of the big books of last year, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, is also a retelling. While it borrows from David Copperfield structurally, it doesn’t use that structure as a tool to aim the story back at the source, but instead to aim it at present day Appalachia. Kingsolver uses the reader’s knowledge of the plot, characters, themes, and narrative structure of the original novel as shorthand to drive the story forward.
Another retelling that staff have been talking about is less recent: Daniel Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (which fits here because it’s a Hamlet retelling) is being re-read by several of us because its prequel, Familiaris, came out this year. Staff who have read it talk about the detailed imagery that makes Wroblewski’s work a great fit for that specific kind of reader who enjoys vivid descriptive prose.
For another type of retellling, try James Ijames’ Fat Ham. The play is coming to OSF in 2025 and it is also a Hamlet retelling (sort of). We have it in the collection, It is a fun read, and it does stand alone. However, it is much more fun by virtue of how it interacts with its source material, so you might want to check out Hamlet too!
…and then there are retellings that are just pure, juicy fun. Lots of nineteenth century novels are ripe for these sorts of retellings. This year, Kevin Kwan has published a retelling of Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Thorne called Lies and Weddings. Kevin Kwan (of Crazy Rich Asians fame) has a great eye for portraying (and sometimes skewering) cultures of excessive wealth. This one is a great beach read.
In the case of all of these books, you don’t necessarily have to have read the original tale to enjoy these recent titles, but we hope you will want to return to them after reading these new modern takes on these stories!