‘I first read Little Women when I was ten,’ recalls Rachael Fernandes, reflecting on the book that would go on to shape The Sharma Sisters, her reimagining of the classic through a contemporary British Indian family. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy find their counterparts in Kav, Mally, Trina and Ori, breathing new life into the classic. Little Women, at its core, is a novel about coming-of-age, and the story is a representation of how being a woman can take you down many different paths. Calling her book ‘an ode to women, in all our flaws and glory,’ Rachael hopes anyone who reads The Sharma Sisters finds a piece of themselves, as she did in Little Women.
Reading Little Women
I first read Little Women when I was ten. I remember being given the book by my mum, who was also a fan. And I got so invested in the lives of Jo, Amy, Beth and Meg. Considering they were four white American women in the eighteenth century, and I was a young British Indian girl in the twenty-first, that is a mean feat. I have returned to Little Women several times over the last twenty years, taking something new from it each time. Adapting the story to be about a British Indian family felt so straightforward. After all, we can have large families! My mum was one of six children, and I grew up in a large extended family.
When I sat down to write it, I initially wrote it as a young adult novel, trying to replicate the original in the modern day. When I took a step back, I realised it wasn’t right. More than the events that take place, Little Women is about coming-of-age, how being a woman can take you down many different paths. So, it made sense to make it about women in their twenties.
Adapting A Text
Whether it be director or writer, everyone wants to breathe new life into a text they love. My view is that you should honour the original text, but leave something new for fans to find in it. You also need to bear in mind people who haven’t read or seen the original version, making your version accessible for anyone new to the story. In The Sharma Sisters I am very careful to make sure you can enjoy the book without knowing Little Women at all, and if you do, you’ll find some familiarity there.
Seeing Oneself
Possibly like every female writer, I have always seen myself as Jo in Little Women. She was my original aspirational hero, someone who wanted to defy convention to do what she loves. In The Sharma Sisters, I’ve put a bit of myself into every character. I worked in the arts for the beginning of my career, which inspired a lot of Kav’s journey, and my type A personality comes out a lot in Mally. Like Ori, I am the eldest child, and like Trina, I love to travel. So much so I’ve now moved from the UK to the USA. But these characters have all borrowed part of myself. As I fleshed them out more, they became unique and individual, and not like me at all.
Writing Sisterhood
It may come as a shock but I don’t have any sisters. I actually just have a younger brother. But I learnt a lot about sisterhood from my female friends. In my early twenties I lived with four other women in a house share in London. I think that experience shaped a lot of my writing, seeing how different women can have completely different lives, but all be united under one roof. This book is an ode to women, in all our flaws and glory. My writing process is quite boring. I have a full-time job, so mostly it’s just having the determination to work around that and write a little every day. I wrote this book across three homes and two continents, in mornings and at nights, but the main thing I learnt is: if you love doing it, you’ll find a way.
Surprises Along the Way
Writing an adult novel definitely feels different to publishing young adult writing, mostly because I feel people I know will be the target audience and actually read it, so there is slightly more pressure here. I think the one thing that always blows my mind is how many drafts you need to do. I think when I first imagined being a writer, I couldn’t even imagine writing a full length first draft. Now I’m constantly having to redraft, but what is surprising is that I like that more than the coming up with the original version.
Words Neeraja Srinivasan
Date 14.3.2026
This article is from the April EZ. For more such stories, read the EZ here.