What an entertaining romp! Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was mostly a delight to read. Yes, the Bennet family, Mr. and Mrs. and daughters, are alive and well and living mostly in Cincinnati. Mrs. B still fusses and cluelessly concocts superficial schemes to marry off her daughters. Mr. B continues to use dry wit to douse her schemes: “My dear,” said Mr. Bennet, “if a sock puppet with a trust fund and a Harvard medical degree moved here, you’d think he was meant to marry one of our girls.”
All five daughters with their romantic escapades and career challenges appear in the Eligible novel as well. As in Pride and Prejudice, however, the majority of the drama revolves around the oldest two: Liz and Jane.
Jane’s beau appears on a bachelor TV show called Eligible, and Liz’s Fitzwilliam Darcy is a neurosurgeon in Cincinnati. As in the Austen novel, Liz’s first impression of Darcy is arrogance, and the rest of the novel is the tension between them as she discovers her prejudice is due to her own pride.
Sittenfeld’s retelling of this classic is playful, sexy, fast-paced, and ultra-modern. Dialogue is crisp and loving, even when blunt. Toward the end of the novel, a few prolonged scenes, including out-of-control drunkenness, felt boring and unseemly for the character. But other than those scenes, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I found it hilarious. Its plot twists and humor surprised me at every turn.
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