Jenna Starborn

Jenna Starborn / Sharon Shinn.-- New York : Ace Books, 2002.
381 p. ; 23 cm.
“A brilliant new twist on the classic story of Jane Eyre” – front cover
ISBN: 044100900X (pbk.) :

1. Bildungsromans. 2. Love stories. 3. Science fiction. 4. Young women – Fiction. I. Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855. Jane Eyre.

The thought of a science fiction version of Charlotte Brontë’s classic, may strike many potential readers as about as appealing as listening to a Bach fugue played on an electronic synthesizer accompanied by an Electro-Theremin. Others may be intrigued by the novelty (pun intended) of the task, and may give it a try. They will be rewarded. It’s audacious task to attempt a rewrite of Jane Eyre. But Shinn has attempted and succeeded. Keeping close to the plot and characters of the original, she’s produced a novel that retains the emotional power and much of the style of Brontë’s original. At the same time she’s incorporated elements of science fiction that fans of the genre will enjoy, interstellar travel, social criticism, and integrated it into key elements of the plot, so that it is not just background scenery. Part of the fun is seeing what Shinn has kept and changed and how skillfully and wittily she’s integrated the changes into the story. It’s not unlike watching a Shakespeare play done in modern dress, where Hamlet wields a handgun instead of a sword. For example when the eponymous heroine of Jenna Starborn (the stand-in for Brontë’s Jane Eyre) arrives at Thorastone Park (Thornfield), her job is as a generator technician, not as a governess, a position that is already occupied by a character named Janet Ayerson. Brontë’s Jane, often addresses the book’s reader directly, as in the concluding chapter, “Reader, I married him.” Shinn’s Jenna owns “an 865 Reeder Recorder/Player,” into which she records her diary. So Jenna’s climactic line is, “Reeder, I married him.”