Prajapati Bharat Bharat itibaren Skrydlieva, Beyaz Rusya
This one's actually four and a half. My only reservation is that at a couple of rare moments, Ripley steps over the line into the "pornmance" department (I just invented that term). There's mentioning of thrusting and emptiness being filled. Seriously, we could have done without those standard and very pedestrian terms. Otherwise, a perfect reading experience and rings true to Mitchell's vision. I don't care if it's unauthorized--Ripley's a pro, and she understands Scarlett better than anyone. Her selfishness and bullish stubbornness remain intact. She's a feisty, spoiled, and often abrasive and unpleasant bitch. The difference here is that she is madly in love with Rhett Butler, and just as Ashley Wilkes was so long an object of her affection and worship, so now is Rhett. He also has the power to infuriate her like no one else, and so she can't live with him, can't live without him, and the fact that he now has no perceivable desire to stay with her makes her quest to get him back all the more maddening and engrossing. Ripley does an interesting turn by taking Scarlett to Ireland for the last half of the book. I don't want to ruin the fun there, but when Cat comes on the scene, it provides for the character development Scarlett was sorely needing at this point in the ongoing narrative to sustain our affections for her. You might hate her motivations and her actions, but you have to love and admire her zeal. --SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD-- The conclusion is deeply satisfying in a way that "happily ever after" doesn't capture. It's more like "joyfully dysfunctional ever after" and given how much a square peg both Scarlett and Rhett are and the Olympus-like clash of their personalities and affections, would we really want it any other way?