3.5 stars. I didn’t go into this book expecting Jane Austen levels of genius so my experience reading Eligible was pretty enjoyable. As far as Austen adaptations go, it was pretty great, about on par with something like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Let’s be real, it’s unlikely that any adaptation is ever going to reach the heights of an Austen original, but I was surprised by how closely Sittenfeld’s version hewed to Pride and Prejudice. In Eligible, Liz and Jane are both in their late […]
Modern Retellings Like This One Make Me Happy
What a delightful surprise. I’ve read Ms. Sittenfeld’s writing before (Sisterland), and I’ve read Pride and Prejudice, so I knew it would be entertaining. I also knew how it would end, sort of, so it wasn’t exactly suspenseful. And yet I read 500 pages in 24 hours. I stayed up too late reading last night, and started up first thing this morning. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice you know the characters – the basic personality types are still there, but everyone is aged up […]
An Updated Pride and Prejudice (by a kid I used to babysit!)
I grew up in Cincinnati, as did author Curtis Sittenfeld. In fact, the Sittenfelds lived next door to us on Menlo Avenue when I was a teenager, and I babysat Curtis and her older sister when they were quite small. They were only there for a few years and Curtis was young enough that she probably wouldn’t remember me, but I have followed her career from afar over the past decade and have always been thrilled and impressed that a fellow Cincinnatian has become a […]
A Strange Place to Be
If you’ve been in a bookstore in the last few months, you’ve probably seen this book. Or maybe I’m the only one who kept noticing it. The cover shows two white girls, probably ten years old, with their heads together, half of each face outside of the frame. It was part of a ‘buy two, get one free’ sale at Powell’s (the same one that resulted in me reading The Martian, so I’m forever thankful for it), and the back looked like it might be […]
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