THE WIFE UPSTAIRS

Jane Eyre gets a modern, Alabama-based reboot in Hawkins’ latest thriller.

Dog walker to the elite and sometime petty thief, Jane will do what she must to survive. Growing up as a witness to violence in various foster homes, she’s tougher than she looks. Then she meets Eddie Rochester, who's recently lost his wife, Bertha, and his wife’s best friend, Blanche Ingraham, in a tragic boating accident, their bodies never found. Dating Eddie gives Jane the social capital to move from dog walker to equal within the neighborhood, and soon, copying the style and mannerisms of the status-conscious women around her, she is welcome on their committees and at their parties. Bea Rochester, who was the glossy creator of a fashion brand, gets her own sections of the story as well. Given the names, it quickly becomes clear that Hawkins is basing the novel on Jane Eyre. While reimagining the classics is always fair game, there must be a point to it; that is, the original text must in some way enhance or add complexity or interest to the new text, and vice versa. In this case, Hawkins’ novel falls short. Given the title and all the existing criticism of Charlotte Brontë’s original, Hawkins had the opportunity to explore the ideas of feminism and exoticism through a 21st-century lens; to critique ideas of masculine strength and mental health; to overlay a more complex idea of family and parenting and status. Instead, the characters are themselves mere caricatures whose only claims to having layers are the names they share with the originals. The Gothic creepiness is mostly lost; the subtext is nonexistent; and perhaps worst of all, Jane, though never perhaps a heroine to emulate, loses the opportunity to change and evolve. With no one to feel for, or even cheer for, the novel offers little true enjoyment and never really takes off as an original mystery.

Skip this one and read Wide Sargasso Sea instead.