If you’re one of the people in my life who wonders what all the fuss is about—why anyone (sometimes it seems everyone) still reads the six slim novels written by Jane Austen—Curtis Sittenfeld, a smart, funny, parent has written the delightful novel Eligible to show you why.
Eligible follows all the characters you’d expect to find in a knockoff P&P rehash, but not a single one of them are anything other than modern people. A neurosurgeon. A reality TV star. A manicurist. An avid bowler. A Journalist. Just people that exist in our current world, hooking up, going to CrossFit, living with the hilarity, the disappointments, and the miscommunications of our everyday lives (YES! yours and mine).
Doesn’t sound like fun? Don’t like novels about people living their lives? If you’re an Austenite, I encourage you to try it out anyway. This book is on my JASNA Book group list, and well worth your time.
It plays up all the hilarity of Austen’s original turned upside down. Ludicrously funny in the way it expands reader expectations and then replaces them with something that is better, deeply relatable, and more relevant for our day-and-age.
Things named in the book that seem uninspired at first are nods and winks to those who know: Mascara, Sporty, the fictionalized ‘Pemberley Estate’ in Atherton, CA (Filoli). The characters Austen fans know and love are so obvious, the reader wonders how they’ve never noticed 2018 incarnations before. How could someone as kind and optimistic as Jane even *exist* in 2018? She’s a Yogi of course. The sharp-witted and curious Lizzy? freelance journalist for a women’s magazine. Insufferable Mr. Collins? Nerd of Nerds: Startup CEO. The list and the giggles go on as each Bennett, Bingley, and Darcy are re-drawn with skill and compassion.
If you’re not an Austen fan, I still say the book is worth your time. It’s well written and a quick read, with some chapters lasting only a page or so. If you wonder at all what this modern day and age are coming to, give Sittenfeld’s novel a try. You’ll learn more than a little bit about the experiences of millennials and what all the fuss of living as a twenty—or even thirty—something is all about.
What do you think?