Burning Thoughts

Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very fine recasting of Pride and Prejudice to 21st century America with liberated woman and massive changes in technology and daily life.

Liz was as lively and discerning as Austen’s Lizzie. Here’s a little precision I enjoyed, “Was she disappointed or relieved? She’d have expected the former but instead, without doubt, felt the latter.”

That Liz did not ask Darcy at restaurant about what Georgie meant by his and Caroline’s news seemed out of character to me. It was a perfectly reasonable question. Not asking was in service of the plot, not the character. On second thought, Liz had been in a lengthy relationship with a married lover which she did not recognize as flawed. Perhaps my expectation of Liz’s character was too formed in the original P&P and I wasn’t sufficiently apt at forming an opinion of it based on Eligible.

Sittenfeld wrote very quick, small scenes which mostly captured the flavor of the BBC’s 1995 Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle version, but last 10% of book was not up to the rest of the book. Instead of only scenes required to propel the emotional story, it seemed that scenes were included because completeness about the reality show production was more important to her rather than story.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book. The initial transportation of the classic love story was well worth reading.

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