Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

by Ben H. Winters, Jane Austen

Overview

From the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes a new tale of romance, heartbreak, and tentacled mayhem.
 
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels? This masterful portrait of Regency England blends Jane Austen’s biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of sea monsters biting. It’s survival of the fittest—and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594744426
Publisher:	Quirk Publishing
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Pages:	343
Sales rank:	121,947
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1180L (what's this?)

About the Author

Jane Austen is coauthor of the New York Times best seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which has been translated into 17 languages and optioned to become a major motion picture. She died in 1817. Ben H. Winters is a writer based in Brooklyn.

Interviews

One thing I have learned, since writing a book called Bedbugs, is that when you write a book called Bedbugs, people are very curious whether you've ever had bedbugs.

It's funny, because I once wrote a book called Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and nobody asked whether I'd had sea monsters.

Well, the answer is no, I've never had either, thank the Lord.

The other main difference between this current book and that old one (and my other so-called "mash-up" novel, Android Karenina) is that this one takes its genre responsibilities more seriously. Whereas Sea Monsters and Android were basically parodies, attempts to humorously and interestingly blend "classic" works of literature with new genre elements, Bedbugs is an honest attempt to scare and chill the reader. No one was supposed to be seriously afraid of the giant mutant lobsters that rampage through my version of Jane Austen, but you are definitely meant to be afraid of the creepy crawlers I've unleashed this time around.

Horror novelists (and filmmakers) have a lot of different ways they try to keep you up all night. Here were three of my strategies, in Bedbugs:

1. Pick the right subject matter.

Half my work was done before I started, because so many people are already so freaked out by bedbugs.

In my humble opinion, truly spooky books and films take as their subjects things that have a pre-existing inherent scariness. Sharks, giant dogs, child-like dolls stuffed in the backs of closets, a row of birds on a telephone wire. People already suspect that the soft-spoken dude checking them into their motel at three a.m. is a knife-wielding lunatic, so Hitchcock just has to press the right buttons.

I am honored that Bedbugs has been compared here and there to Rosemary's Baby, and I just like to point out that that books takes a process that is often the locus of considerable anxiety (i.e. pregnancy) and amplifies those anxieties until they enter the realm of true fear.

2. Live in the mundane and day-to-day.

Especially in the early pages, I tried to firmly ground the story in the realistic, everyday lives of the characters, stuff like grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, taking the kid to the playground, marital squabbles and make-up sex. With just occasional notes of what's to come: a smear of blood here, an unexpected noise there, an unnamed sense of melancholy and dread. This is a technique you will find abundantly in books like The Shining, the aforementioned Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, even The Amityville Horror. There's this careful creation of a realistic, familiar world before the darkness begins to seep in.

3. The Great disintegrating narrator.

Bedbugs begins from the perspective of Susan Wendt, an anxiety-prone insomniac, and it does not leave her point of view for the entire novel. This gives the reader no opportunity to evaluate the truthfulness of her experiences and opinions, and we are unsure, as her paranoia and fear escalate, what is real and what is false. In this effort to bond the reader with the narrator, and keep you in the grips of what are either delusions or genuine monsters, I am working in a grand tradition, beginning with marvelous old-school ghost stories like The Turn of the Screw and The Yellow Wallpaper, both of which tread similarly uneven psychological ground.

So there are a view of the ways that Bedbugs attempts to work its particular form of dark magic...even before we get to the blood-soaked nightmares, the bugs skittering out of wall sconces, and the intimations of demonic possession.

Whether it all works, you'll have to tell me...

Sincerely,

Ben H. Winters
www.BenHWinters.com

Editorial Reviews

You may already know the Dashwood sisters: Marianne, who is ruled by her emotions, is a strong swimmer with excellent lung capacity. Elinor, the older, more controlled sister, is a fine carver of driftwood and an expert on the dangers of marine animals large and small. The two sisters, both of marriageable age, encounter various suitors, including the dashing Willoughby, the honorable Edward Ferrars, and the monstrously tentacled Colonel Brandon. Whether in their cottage on Pestilent Isle or in the social whirl of Sub-Marine Station Beta, they never lack for excitement and danger, and despite the depredations of the hideous Devonshire Fang-Beast, nearly everyone lives happily ever after. The effect is strangely entertaining, like a Weird Al version of an opera aria, and Eugene Smith's amusing illustrations add an extra touch of bizarre hilarity. VERDICT Austen fans will be either delighted or horrified, and those who haven't read Sense and Sensibility will be confused. But readers of Jasper Fforde and other literary in-joke writers will enjoy this follow-up to the best-selling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.—Jenne Bergstrom, San Diego Cty. Lib.

Library Journal