The Once and Future King by T.H. White
White's take on King Arthur, published in 1958, will probably remain the definitive one for the next hundred years or so. (I doubt Grossman would disagree.) It's nowhere near as politically sophisticated as Grossman's take on the story, but it's a deeply charming novel of enormous psychological complexity.
White imagines Arthur as a boy of average talents, dimwitted but basically well-meaning, who finds himself in the unfortunate position of being destined to become England's greatest king. Arthur's schoolboy tutelage under Merlin makes up the cozy, kid-friendly first volume of the novel, also known as The Sword in the Stone. (The book was first published as separate volumes in a series and later revised, Malory-like, into a single novel.) As the book goes on and Arthur's choices become more complicated, the novel grows more and more adult with him.
White's greatest invention of all is Lancelot, whom he imagines as a man with a profound unspoken weakness at his core that drives him to perform his knightly feats; a man who is deep down cruel and cowardly and so chooses to be brave and kind. A miracle as impressive as any other Camelot can offer.
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton
Probably one of the best character arcs in Shakespeare is Henry V's transformation. We first meet him as callow party boy Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1, a play named after Hal's dad that's really about how disappointed he is in his son. Over the course of Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V, we see Hal morph from layabout to warrior king. The cost appears to be considerable deformation to his soul, but we can't be sure. Shakespeare doesn't like to tell us what Hal is thinking all that much.
Hal's soul is the primary concern of Henry Henry, a debut novel by Allen Bratton. Bratton imagines Hal as the idle son of a modern-day duke, out every night partying with another man. Hal's father says that Hal is wasting his life and, moreover, is sinning; Hal thinks his dad is probably right, but also that he's just coping with the weight of his father's expectations as best he can. This is a playful, elegant reimagining that takes full advantage of the interiority of the novel to roam the shadowy corridors of Hal's mind.
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye
"Reader, I murdered him," begins this topsy-turvy reimagination of Jane Eyre.
I am a Jane Eyre partisan, and I've always been fascinated by how hard contemporary novelists seem to find it to adapt this book into the present the way people are always doing with Austen. Jane, with her energy and her barely suppressed rage, is such a contemporary character that it seems as though she should be able to make her way into the 21st century without a problem. Yet, at the same time, a plot that hinges on a teenage governess falling in love with her middle-aged employer while his imprisoned wife wails in the attic above just doesn't fit cleanly into our era.
Barring the immortal Wide Sargasso Sea, an exploration of Rochester's first wife in which Jane herself barely features, Lyndsay Faye's Jane Steele is the best contemporary adaptation of Jane Eyre I know of. Faye leaves Jane and her cohort in Victorian England, but she brings the plot into the 21st century by reimagining Jane as a serial killer. One by one, she murders all the men who attempt to chastise her native spirit or hold her back in any way. When she finds love, it's with the only man who understands what drives her to kill. This novel is pulpy and delicious.
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