Even though P & P is one of my favourite books and I know it inside out, I wasn't offended or upset by the parody. I was able to let it be the piss-take Grahame-Smith intended it to be.
But Jane Eyre Laid Bare is another matter entirely.
Eve Sinclair has massacred Jane Eyre all for the sake of sexing it up.
I'm not a prude. I've read Fifty Shades of Grey.
The writing and plot line were ghastly - some of the most excrutiating dialogue and plot lines I've ever had the misfortune to read - but the sex!
The sex was hot (and controversial).
The sex in Jane Eyre Laid Bare tries to be hot and controverial - masturbation, young girls together in dorms, the butler and maid behind the grate, strip-jack charades in the drawing room - blah, blah, blah!It was tedious, contrived and so forced to be something that it's not, that it was like watching a slow-motion car accident! You could see the disaster coming, but couldn't get out of the way in time.
The Grahame-Smith books worked because they weren't meant to be taken seriously. He was poking fun - we were all in on the joke.
There is nothing funny about Jane Eyre Laid Bare. It fails as a classic; it fails as erotic fiction; and it fails as a parody.
The only reason I bothered to spend a whole half hour of my lunch break reading this trash; and the only reason why I spent another half hour writing this post was because of a friend.
She asked me to review this honestly for her work. To her credit, the favour was asked before she'd had a chance to read it herself! Once she did read it she expressed very similar thoughts and withdrew the request...but by then I was all fired up.