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MikeC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
749 Posts |
 Posted - 04/25/2006 : 08:28:23 AM
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My wife. I love her.
She's an habitue of garage sales & flea markets,
which is a wonderful way to feed your addiction
for media. She found a book on CD of SE Hinton's
first 'Adult' novel, HAWKES HARBOR, from 2004,
and being a fan of Ms. Hinton's earlier novels
like THE OUTSIDERS, she snapped it up.
We listened to it on a long car trip, and it was
moderately interesting (even though the 2nd disc
was, apparently, a dupe of the first due to a
production error).
But, once it got halfway through, it became pretty
obvious that Hinton was playing some sort of
weird literary game: the main character was
a na'er do well orphan who hooked up with an
Irish conman, and ended up in the town of Hawkes
Harbor, Delaware. The main character (with the
cringe inducing hame Jamie Summers; used without
apparent irony) stumbles on a legend that, under
the old Hawkes mansion was buried pirate's treasure,
and goes to find an old cave with a chained up
coffin.
Needless to say, he opened the coffin and found....
Yes. A vampire.
At that point, the little hints from earlier in
the narrative fell into place: SHE WAS RETELLING
DARK SHADOWS!!!
I haven't listened to the whole thing yet (it's
6 CD's packed fully with tracks), but apparently
(according to a little Google searching), Hinton
originally wrote it as a straight DARK SHADOWS
novel (apparently, she was/is a fan of the show),
told from the point of view of Barnabas' thrall
Willie Loomis, but couldn't get the rights to the
characters, so she just changed some names and
went on with it.
It was hyped as her first 'adult' novel, but apart
from the DS connection, its really just an extended
character study. But, the fact that a literary
figure like Hinton would write what is essentially
fan fiction and get it published is endlessly
fascinating for me, and perhaps worthy of discussion
here: can anyone else think of a novel that is
similar?
MikeC |
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