Emma of 83rd Street by Emily Harding and Audrey Bellezza
Emma of 83rd Street (2023) by Emily Harding and Audrey Bellezza is a debut contemporary romance that adapts Jane Austen’s well-known novel Emma (1815), and retells the story with a whole new setting and writing style. Here, the titular Emma Woodhouse experiences love and friendship in the big city of Manhattan, New York.
Emma is studying art history in her final year of graduate school at New York University. She has an older sister, Margo, who is married to George Knightley’s brother, Ben. Both the Woodhouses and the Knightleys have been neighbours and best friends since childhood. Emma and Knightley have a close relationship, and both are searching for love and stability.
Emma Woodhouse is known to be a matchmaker. In Austen’s work, Emma helps her friend Harriet find a husband – after a few catastrophic ups and downs. In this novel, Emma’s new friend from university, Nadine, is the stand-in for Harriet, and Emma helps her try to find a boyfriend using dating apps.
Nadine is new to the city. Emma introduces her to the Woodhouse family, and they spend a lot of time together. Emma teaches Nadine how to be confident, independent and enjoy life, which mostly consists of:
“New freedom and new opportunities and the entire catalog of nineties pop music.”
However, their friendship is somewhat manipulative: Emma always tells Nadine what to wear, what to say and how to behave with men. Knightley is the only one who calls out Emma’s bad behavior, saying:
“You treat the world like it’s your personal playground, Woodhouse. Like everything is here to amuse you until you find something better to do.”
Emma and Knightley have a secret crush on each other, yet while Knightley goes out with lots of girls, yet Emma is happy being single. At first, their relationship seems complicated, with Knightley always blaming Emma for being immature and meddling in other people’s lives, while Emma sees him as irritating and indifferent to her own feelings.
Emma of 83rd Street has a great combination of romance and comedy, where the familiar tale plays out with a modern twist. The dialogue between Emma, her father Mr. Woodhouse, Nadine and George Knightley is especially amusing.
Personally, I loved seeing how the two authors made these familiar characters fit into a modern life in New York City, when they were originally created for a very different place and time period, in England’s high society and beautiful green countryside. So, in this new adaptation, the themes of social status, class and marriage were transformed play out in the exploration of dating, love, relationships and night life in the city.
It’s wonderful to see popular characters in classic literature shifted into the future, experiencing a modern way of living. Here, the shift was successful, as Harding and Bellezza give Emma a whole different world where she can find her own way of life, chasing love and new opportunities.
Overall, I enjoyed this modern characterisation of Emma, and recommend this book for all readers of classic and contemporary fiction.
Joyce Bou Charaa is a Lebanese writer, editor, and book reviewer. Her articles are published in The Mark Literary Review, Newpages, Journal of Expressive Writing, and currently in The Indiependent. Also, she has a BA in English language and literature, from the Lebanese University.