Re Jane (2015) by Patricia Park

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Re Jane (2015)

by Patricia Park

6138 Gates Ave, Flushing, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 25/26 

New York: 102/103

  Re Jane is an at times excruciating re-telling of Jane Eyre from the perspective of a Korean-American orphan who was raised by her all Korean uncle in Queens, New York.   I...didn't actually get that it was a retelling of Jane Eyre until after I finished the book and looked it up online, which shows you how much of an impression Jane Eyre has made on me.  It does, however, explain why I found Re Jane to be so particularly difficult to read/listen to- I had to give up on the Audiobook version right around the time she fell for the adopted father of the girl of the family she was Nannying for in Brooklyn.   The 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project puts this book on the location of the family grocery store in Queens, but it just as easily could have placed in Brooklyn, where her nanny-family lives, or for, that matter, Seoul, where Jane decamps after the aforementioned sexual encounter with the father of her charge.