Word: ripley
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...Scarlett, Ripley leaves the South behind to explore the conflict between the Irish and the British in the 1870's, as witnessed by a Southern belle with Irish blood. The effect is less than enthralling. Scarlett lived and breathed the South in Gone with the Wind; in Scarlett, she is essentially a spectator in a far less interesting saga...
...Ripley tries to update the tone of the novel--she carefully avoids using dialect for her black characters and evades the topic of race relations after the war entirely. In order to do so, Ripley ships Scarlett off to Ireland to discover her roots. Unfortunately, the South which Scarlett leaves has been incorrectly reconstructed by Ripley. The graceful antebellum South which Ripley depicts, full of honor and traditions and social proprieties, was destroyed by the Civil...
Southerners did their best to keep the Old South alive after the Confederate defeat, but they were not nearly as successful as Ripley would have the reader believe. Except for an occasional economic upheaval, the war appears not to have ravaged the lives and souls of Ripley's characters...
...Ripley takes many of her characters from the original novel--Mammy, Ashley Wilkes and many others reappear. Their appearances are perfunctory, as Ripley devotes the bulk of her energies to the development of many new characters, most notably the scores of O'Haras that Scarlett meets both in Savannah and in Ireland. Ripley cannot do much with characters like Ashley and Aunt Pittypat; Ashley remains wishy-washy, and Aunt Pittypat still faints...
...really interesting characters were killed off in Gone with the Wind, except for two: Scarlett and Rhett. These two alone should have provided sufficient sparks for a sequel. But Ripley has managed to turn Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler into pale, insubstantial shadows...