New York Review of Books Review

'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Beowulf' get a fresh look. Three fairy tales become a tale of two magical sisters. IF THERE'S ONE staple of entertainment these days, it's the adaptation. TV shows are drawing inspiration from books ("My Brilliant Friend" and "The Haunting of Hill House"). Movies are reinventing treasures of the past, sometimes from a studio's own vault (looking at you, Disney). And novels, especially ones for the young adult audience, are reworking classic stories that came before them. These three novels put a contemporary twist on canonical tales about young people facing the challenges of building their own futures. IBI ZOBOI'S CHARMING PRIDE (Balzer + Bray, 304 pp., $17.99; ages 12 and up) isn't an adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" so much as a "remix" of Jane Austen's tale of unexpected love, as the novel's cover says. Instead of Elizabeth, we meet Zuri, a high school student living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She has her life mapped out: When she graduates, Zuri wants to go to Howard University, where she hopes to collect the "wisdoms found in old, dusty books written by wrinkled brown hands ... and take them with me back home to sprinkle all over Bushwick like rain showers." Boys aren't a part of the plan. That all changes when the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street. Darius Darcy, their aloof son, quickly becomes Zuri's nemesis. But despite a rough start, Zuri and Darius soon find a relationship brewing. "Pride" winks continually at its source material: Instead of the "Bennet" family, we meet the "Benetiz" family, "Jane" becomes "Janae," "Lady Catherine de Bourgh" becomes "paternal grandmother, Mrs. Catherine Darcy" and so on. One pleasure of the book, then, is watching how the blistering romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy maps onto characters so different from Austen's original creations. Yet that steadfast loyalty to Austen is also the biggest hurdle the book faces. By adhering so closely to the plotting of its source material, "Pride" can be a bit predictable, even to readers with only a cursory knowledge of "Pride and Prejudice." Instead, the more compelling and unexpected romance of the novel is not the courtship between Zuri and Darius: It's the love story between Zuri and her home, a neighborhood threatened by gentrification. Rather than simply say gentrification is bad, "Pride" holds a nuanced conversation about the ways that an influx of wealth can dismantle a neighborhood and help it at the same time, as seen through the eyes of a girl who must navigate that change. "My neighborhood is made of love," Zuri notes. "But it's money and buildings and food and jobs that keep it alive - and even I have to admit that the new people moving in, with their extra money and dreams, can sometimes make things better." What she wants is to "figure out a way to make both sides of Bushwick work." It is that story - the story of an ambitious girl struggling to cherish her home, even in the face of change - that gives "Pride" its spark and its heart. RATHER THAN REVISITING a classic tale of love, THE BONELESS MERCIES (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 352 pp., $18.99; ages 12 and up), by April Genevieve Tticholke, goes the opposite route: It explores death, war and glory by adapting "Beowulf." The book follows a group of young girls, the titular Boneless Mercies, who are trained killers, traveling across Vorseland, putting the old and sick out of their misery. But one of the Mercies, Frey, wants more than the death trade has to offer. She wants to kill not for money but for glory: "I would try my hand at greatness, and see where it led. Glory. I wanted to touch it. Taste it." With glory in mind, the Boneless Mercies set out to kill the dreaded Blue Vee beast, a giant terrorizing the land. It's a promising take on the oft-adapted epic poem. Unfortunately, "The Boneless Mercies" becomes overwhelmed by the task of expanding "Beowulf" into a new, distinct fantasy world. The meandering plot is encumbered by details that offer little payoff and a few characters who are clichéd and flat, even when we do dive into their back stories. As a result the novel can at times seem as unrewarding as the fate our heroes hope to escape. These stumbles are a shame because they obscure the empowering tale at the heart of the novel, starting with its deeply feminist update to its source material. Our heroes are women, and their antagonists are women, too. They are, at times, brutal and ruthless and violent in ways that cast in stark relief the reductive portrayal of women in so many of the stories that populate our canon. And Tticholke's characters are all searching, in their own way, for justice and equality. "The hearts of Boneless Mercies beat just as strongly as any Vorse warriors," the book declares. In moments like that, "The Boneless Mercies" feels like a cathartic war cry advocating for the power of girls and women. Hiding in the book are also several thoughtful and refreshing themes about the genre of the epic itself. For instance, toward the end, "The Boneless Mercies" flips the very idea of glory that its heroes seek. "I gave you a purpose, a quest, a chance to be noticed by the gods. I gave you this. Never forget," the fearsome Blue Vee beast proclaims in the book's final act. Frey responds, "I am in your debt, and I won't forget." It's both an engaging moment of camaraderie between two foes and a dynamic critique of the hero's journey: Who is granted honor and glory, and at what cost does it come? ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE COMBINES several tales - "The Wild Swans," "The Ugly Duckling" and "Snow White and RoseRed" - and transforms them into the enchanting BLANCA & ROJA (Feiwel & Friends, 371 pp., $17.99; ages 13 and up). The book follows the plight of the del Cisne sisters, Blanca and Roja, who are doomed to a family curse: Each generation of del Cisnes will have two daughters, but they will eventually be separated when one is turned into a swan. Which daughter will it be? The swans decide. When Blanca learns the secret to saving herself from turning into a swan, she resolves to use that advice to save her sister instead. Seeing Blanca's sudden determination in the swans' game, Roja believes she has been abandoned and resolves to thwart her sister and stay human herself. Intertwined with the tale of the del Cisne sisters are the journeys of Page and Yearling, both outcasts - Page, who feels constrained by gender roles ("Him and her, I kinda like getting called both. It's like all of me gets seen then. Doesn't usually happen, though. Most people can't get their head around boy and she at the same time, I guess"), and Yearling, who faces tremendous physical abuse at the hands of his cousin. The two flee into the forest, each for separate reasons, looking for escape. But rather than offering solace, the forest wraps them into Blanca and Roja's quest. To survive, all four will have to find one another, and find themselves. Though it's full of enchantments, what mostly makes "Blanca & Roja" magical is not the spells that animate the plot but the bond of sisterhood that brings to life Blanca and Roja's struggle. This is more than a story about girls who are threatened with being turned into swans - it is about unwavering loyalty to family, and the hurt that comes when that bond seems betrayed. But what elevates "Blanca & Roja" from a good adaptation to a brilliant one is not just how the book reinvents its source material - it's the ideas that McLemore layers on top of it: her own exploration of sisterhood, identity, the yearning to be seen that we all feel and the question of how we protect the things we love most. "The story of the ugly duckling was never about the cygnet discovering he is lovely," McLemore writes. "It is not a story about realizing you have become beautiful. It is about the sudden understanding that you are something other than what you thought you were, and that what you are is more beautiful than what you once thought you had to be." All these elements combine to make a story so complex and original, you'll forget "Blanca & Roja" is not a classic tale in its own right. MJ FRANKLIN is a social editor at The Times and a former editor at Mashable.