Guest post written by author Tom Ellen
Tom Ellen is the co-author of two critically acclaimed Young Adult novels: Freshman and A Totally Awkward Love Story. His books have been widely translated and are published in 15 countries. He is a regular contributor to Viz magazine, and as a journalist he has written for Cosmopolitan, Empire, Evening Standard Magazine, Glamour, NME, ShortList, Time Out, Vice and many more. All About Us [October 13, 2020] is his debut adult novel. He lives in Paris.
I suspect I’m not alone among the readers of this site in citing Clueless as one of my all-time favourite films.
However, it still surprises me that what is – in my opinion – the quintessential 1990s movie was actually based on an early 19th Century novel. The film’s director, Amy Heckerling, read Jane Austen’s 1815 classic, Emma, in college and soon realised how similar it was to her experiences as a teenager 150 or so years later. “That thing of leaving a party and wondering who’s going in whose car is exactly the same as leaving a ball and wondering who’s going in whose carriage”, she said. “Emma fit right into the goofy [’90s] teen world I was writing about.”
Clueless is far from an anomaly in this sense. From 10 Things I Hate About You (based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (based on Homer’s Odyssey), many of the most popular films and books of the past few decades have simply been rebooted versions of classic stories.
Perhaps one of the most frequently retold of these classics is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. From Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, to Bill Murray’s Scrooged, if you want to ignite a quick and easy Twitter feud you can simply put the question out there: What is the best ever adaptation of Dickens’ famous festive book? (For me, it’s A Muppet Christmas Carol, by the way, and I won’t hear otherwise. Michael Caine’s greatest performance. Don’t @ me).
Anyway, this month I am launching myself into this long tradition of using Dickens’ iconic tale as a scaffold on which to build a story. Because my new novel – All About Us – is based loosely on A Christmas Carol.
It centres around Ben – a man in his mid-thirties – who is having a bit of a life crisis. His marriage to his college sweetheart Daphne is on the rocks, and when his old flame Alice gets back in touch, he suddenly wonders what his life might have looked like with her instead of Daphne. A Christmas Eve encounter with a mysterious watch-seller gives him the chance to revisit various Christmases Past, Present and Future. He dives into alternate timelines, and eventually has to make the biggest decision of his life all over again. This time around, though, he must decide if he has the courage to truly follow his heart.
The question is, then: why do I – and so many other writers – keep coming back to this 1843 story? What makes it so intriguing? Its structure is an obvious appeal – that perfect three-act simplicity of the Past/Present/Future idea. But I think the real answer is that A Christmas Carol – like Austen’s Emma – it is a genuinely timeless work.
The themes it explores are woven deeply into the human experience, no matter what age you live in. Regret, hope, grief, self-doubt, self-improvement – no matter who we are or where we live, we can all relate to those things. That ‘Sliding Doors’ idea of imagining how your life might look if you made one decision differently, or took a slightly different path – it all started with old Charlie D and Ebenezer Scrooge.
Another big part of A Christmas Carol‘s appeal is that it’s also – at heart – an optimistic story. It’s about the possibility of change, the possibility of making ourselves better. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and submit my entry for ‘Most Pretentious Statement of 2020’ by claiming that Dickens may have pre-empted Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis: by digging back into his past, Scrooge is able to alter his future.
Despite its quaint Victorian setting, then, it’s a distinctly modern book – and I think that’s why it’s endured so well and remained firmly in the public consciousness. I really hope that if you read All About Us you’ll find it not only funny, romantic and uplifting – but also a worthy inclusion among the many excellent reimaginings of Dickens’ book over the years.
Although, I’m NOT saying it’s better than A Muppet Christmas Carol. Let’s face it: nothing is.
