The Inferno

Issue date: 11/9/09 Section: Frontline

Media Credit: irreference.com Every great love story involves a great man with an octopus face.

While I was reading "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters," I had a feeling that someone that deeply hated Jane Austen's original work would have thought this up while wondering how much better the book would be if Elinor or Marianne were attacked by a giant octopus. The book was a very humorous and highly entertaining take on the original novel.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters models itself after Jane Austen's original work. The characters are still the same and the situations are the same, except for the added sea monsters. The rich Henry Dashwood lives with his second wife and three daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret. While on a journey to discover the source of the Alteration (an event that turned all sea animals, and not to mention sea witches, against humans), Mr. Dashwood gets attacked and killed by a hammerhead shark. His estate is given to his son John, from a previous marriage, who at first agrees to help his sisters, but rapidly changed his mind by his wife's persuasions. John and his wife move into Norland Park, leaving Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters to feel as though they do not belong in their own house. With seemingly no other choice, Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters leave to a shanty cottage on top of a cliff in an island located on an archipelago near Devonshire (which has the highest concentration of sea monsters in England).

As if fighting terrifying sea monsters isn't bad enough, the sisters must find love. Elinor falls for the handsome yet seemingly detached Edward Ferreras and Marianne has two suitors: the charming and dashing Willoughby and the much older and curse afflicted Colonel Brandon. In perhaps the most ingenious way to incorporate sea monsters into the tale, Colonel Brandon was cursed by a sea witch to have a face like that of an octopus, tentacles and all.

The most entertaining aspect of this book is the secondary characters, in particular Mrs. John Middleton. Sir John kidnaps Mrs. Middleton from her island home after he and his men destroy her entire village. References to this tragic event are brought up in a way that is sure to make anyone chuckle, even while lamenting her fate.

While I am sure that many purists will find it intolerable to have such a classic novel turned into a tale of sea creatures and disasters, many other people will delight in the creativity of Ben H. Winters. It is a great satire of the novel and adds greater dangers than the original novel does. After all, it becomes more important to find love at a quicker rate if one could die of a giant octopus attack at any moment.

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