The Sisterhood: Big Brother is watching. But they won't see her coming.

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Books of this nature are not novels, they are a hobby – like one of those pandemic projects. Oh, I’m going to watch all 100 films on the Sight and Sound best ever list and share my thoughts on them online. Oh, I’m going to take a novel beloved by sixth-form literature teachers and political columnists and turn the men into women.

In both, key is the fact that the authors are not having to slavishly reference the work which inspired them. A key idea or character is taken, and what might even be minor, or a small part of the previous work, fires the second author’s own unique voice into their completely original work Perhaps, though, the act of explicitly reimagining a classic is not entirely distinct from what novelists do as a matter of course. "Novelists are quite parasitical in our approach to material, whether it's our own lives or turning people we've met into characters," says Biles. "There's always an element of harvesting material and producing something new with it." s Julia gets the spotlight in this reimagining of Orwell’s classic, where she presents as a dutiful Outer Party member, but is working with a small band of rebel women. A heart-pounding look into a secondary character’s legacy' The disparities between the rich and poor and class divide in this country haven’t dissipated – perhaps only deepened. The wars are depressingly similar. As a woman, I was interested in Julia and wondered if he was writing now without the 1940s gaze, would Orwell write her differently? With agency? And if she had hopes and fears and choices of her own, what would they be?

The Sydney Morning Herald

In this highly original take on Orwell’s 1984– the Big Brother of all dystopian classics – Bradley weaves a complex and engaging plot around the idea of a female resistance to oppressive overlords. Oppressive and creepy, but with real heart’ A. K. TURNER My thanks to Simon & Schuster UK for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Sisterhood’ by Katherine Bradley. Mary Shelley’s Proserpine was a precursor to the feminist reboots of the modern era. Credit: Getty Images

Fast-paced and suspenseful . . . The Sisterhood's greatest gift, however, may be in its message of hope, capable of surmounting even the most formidable of odds and the most uncertain of futures' KATHERINE J. CHEN, author of Joan It is difficult for any writer to attempt to write a counterpart to a novel as renown as 1984, but unfortunately, in my opinion, I do not think Bradley hits the mark here.When Julia thinks she’s found a potential member of The Brotherhood, it seems like their goal might finally be in their grasp. But as she gets closer to Winston Smith, Julia’s past starts to catch up with her and we soon realise that she has many more secrets than we’d first imagined – and that overthrowing Big Brother might cost her everything – but if you have nothing left to lose then you don’t mind playing the game . . . With Proserpine – as with much of her work – Shelley was ahead of her time. Today, feminist retellings of classical mythology from the perspective of minor, sidelined, or adjunct female characters is a booming industry, with Ursula K. Le Quin, Margaret Atwood, Madeline Miller, Pat Barker, Jennifer Saint, Natalie Haynes and many others all putting their stamp on the genre. Readers, it seems, can’t get enough. But nowhere have these kinds of stories been more fully explored than in literature, where the impulse to reinvent old characters and reimagine old plots can be seen across almost every genre and aimed at every kind of readership. Commonly hinged on the big players of the Western canon – classical mythology, European fairytales, Shakespeare, the Bible – a steady stream of retellings have allowed readers to experience familiar tales in new lights.