Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid is the second in The Austen Project series of novels which are modern retellings by contemporary authors of Jane Austen’s classics. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t have the baggage of my knowledge and love of the original as I had with the first, I much preferred this second outing to Joanna Trollope’s updating of Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s original story of Northanger Abbey tells the story of a sheltered young girl whose love of gothic novels leads her to make some very strange assumptions about the family of the young man she meets while visiting Bath. During the novel she learns to separate fiction from reality and to develop a better understanding of human motivations. What I liked The updating. I felt McDermid did a much better job than Trollope of bringing Austen’s characters into the 21st century. They felt modern and fresh and their motivations seemed in line with a modern teenager or young person. I could easily imagine sitting down to coffee with Cat and Ellie to discuss the latest novel. And as evidenced by John Thorpe and Frederick Tilney, men who are too full of self-importance to consider the wishes of the…