Can you transport a classic novel to the 21st century?

I'm going through an intertextuality phase this month - I've just finished reading Joanne Trollope's modern take on Sense and Sensibility then of course had to re-read the original, and had so much fun watching the BBC series and then the Emma Thompson movie with my daughters.

Of course, Joanne Trollope's version has been hit with heavy criticism - as are most attempts to modernize classics - but I myself am at a loss as to why. Perhaps you need to enjoy Trollope's "aga-sagas" (a term that was meant as an insult when a journalist coined it, but for me has come to be a term of endearment for her beautifully written takes on ordinary people's lives) in order to appreciate her rendition of the classic. I loved it. It was a familiar story transported to a different time but for most of it, it was timeless.

The only clunky bits, I felt, were the injections of iPods or Facebook, which weren't really necessary to make the story modern. But apart from that, I think that it can stand alone as its own novel, or be used as study of intertextuality. I'll be recommending it to my students as an accompaniment to Jane Austen, and as an introduction to the works of Joanne Trollope.

Joanne Trollope says in an interview that she included one line from the original book in her novel - see if you can find it...