Ed and I are happy to be a part of the Broken Blog Tour. Today we welcome AE Rought with a guest post about the classics!
Broken by AE Rought
Release Date: January 8, 2012
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
384 Pages
Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.
A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry's boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.
When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she's intrigued despite herself. He's an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely... familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel's.
The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there's something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks' estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.
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What makes a classic book classic?
What makes a classic book classic?
Thank you for having me on your blog to talk about classics! I’ve been chewing on this topic for a while. Even though I’m an author, describing a classic on my own terms has left me fairly tongue-tied. Terms like ‘that certain je ne sais quoi’ keep cropping up, and feel like a total cop out. So, I went looking for a more traditional definition of classic, as a noun.
According to Merriam-Webster, classics are either authors or (capitalized as Classics) literary works from ancient Greece and Rome, and went on to say “a work of enduring excellence,” or “a typical or perfect example.” From there, I went to Dictionary.com and found these definitions: “an author or a literary work of the first rank, especially one of demonstrably enduring quality,” and “an artist or artistic production considered a standard,” and finally, “a work that is honored as definitive in its field.”
To me, a classic has that certain “it factor” that makes it as good today as years from now (in either direction). They can stand apart and still define their genre. While some classics seem to defy genre definition—for example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Gothic horror, but it’s also often called the first sci-fi novel.
A book I think might become like this? Across the Universe, by Beth Revis. It’s a blend of genres, and such a damn good example of YA dystopian fiction, and sci-fi, and murder mystery… Time will tell, but this is a new classic for me. Another example could be the Die for Me series by Amy Plum. (Yes, I’m a HUGE fan.) I think it’s a brilliant representation of YA paranormal romance and still manages to stand apart with Amy’s unique spin on life and love after death.
Classics, for me, are those books that do it better, the books that can be boiled down beyond story to pure element. They are the books that encourage us to strive for their greatness, invite us to study their elements and learn from them. And for me, it’s an invitation to look at their elements from a different angle, and imagine more.
There are a plethora of retellings, revisits, reimaginings of classics, from fairytales to Gothic fiction and beyond. And I’m glad.
There are as many angles to a story as there are readers to discover them. I’ve read a couple spins on Classics—Greek or Roman tales—and enjoyed their takes. I have Alice in Zombieland floating around the house right now, and am really looking forward to her riff on an American classic. My TBR pile is full of retellings, and I’m always on the lookout for suggestions, so… What about you? Do you like new spins on old classics? Do you have a favorite new classic? Tell me about them!
Emily is a huge fan of retellings! She never gets tired of them and loves seeing an authors spin on her favorite classics!
How do you feel about retellings?
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