Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
Publication Date: April 19, 2016
Pages: 492
Goodreads Rating: 3.71
Goodreads Summary:
This version of the Bennet family—and Mr. Darcy—is one that you have and haven’t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help—and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.
Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master’s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won’t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane’s fortieth birthday fast approaches.
Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip’s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . .
And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.
Pride and Prejudice is my all time favorite book. I’ve read it many times; I collect random editions I come across in stores (totaling 9, at the moment), and reading every adaptation that catches my interest. Now, working in a Barnes & Noble, I come across quite a few, and when a giant stack of shiny red-clad books were placed in front of me to apply the little “30% off, members save an extra 10%” stickers in the upper right corner, I couldn’t help but notice across the top was written A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Monday nights are when we change what books get the percentage off stickers because we are usually dreadfully slow. We aren’t technically supposed to read on the job, but after stickering and unstickering all the necessary books, I couldn’t help but sneak a peak. I read the first 7 chapters before my shift ended and we closed the store that night. Now, that’s not saying terribly much because all the chapters are extremely short, most being only a page or two in length. I came in the next day, on my day off, to buy it.
Everything that I loved about the original, Eligible tries (mostly successfully) to imitate. The wit and humor is on par, but rather more obvious, which is what one would expect in a modern adaptation. I thought it was interesting that the reason Mrs. Bennet knows of Bingley, isn’t just because he’s rich (although, she loves pointing out how his family started a mining company), but because he starred in a fictitious version of The Bachelor. And Google is very much a thing in this modern adaptation, which I loved when Liz decided to do a google search for Darcy:
FITZWILLIAM DARCY ATHERTON, CA, Liz typed into Google, and after reading through the results, she tried, sequentially, Fitzwilliam Darcy Harvard Medical School, Fitzwilliam Darcy University of Cincinnati Comprehensive Stroke Center, and, just for the hell of it, Fitzwilliam Darcy girlfriend.
And sticking to “most eligible” stereotypes, Darcy is a neurosurgeon, graduated from Harvard Medical School, and is insanely rich. Liz, herself, notes that if she didn’t despise him so much even she might be tempted to date him.
Kitty and Lydia are far more vapid in this retelling than in any other I’ve read. Instead of being silly and young flirts, they intentionally seek out to verbally abuse everyone around them (Lydia more so than Kitty). They’re vain and self-serving, which makes Lydia’s fate rather confusing, but also her only redeeming quality.
The character of Wickham was split into two, which I thought was an interesting choice, one that took me nearly 300 pages to realize. I was literally sitting there thinking to myself “when is Jasper Wick going to cheat on Liz with her youngest sister? Will she cheat on Ham with him?” when it hit me: Jasper Wick and Hamilton. duh. Anywho... I felt that Jasper’s “crimes” and the reason Darcy initially dislikes him to be rather dull. They seemed more like reasons for Liz to hate him than Darcy. And honestly, Ham felt too nice and too charming for Lydia to deserve.
Overall, I really enjoyed this retelling. I only had three things I extremely disliked about the book:
The story as a whole was incredibly wordy. There were many unnecessary tangents thrown in, I believe, in a misguided attempt to pay homage to Jane Austen’s writing style.
The word “said.” There are a million and one ways to let your reader know a specific character is saying something without directly stating so. I had thought about counting the number of “said” words, but after I hit about 80 in the first 10 pages, I gave up and just started skipping over the word mentally. Although, it does get slightly better around the 350 page mark.
The last chapter. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the adaption did a wonderful job of creating a real character out of Mary, one with depth and more than three lines, but to go inside her head and answer questions that I don’t think any reader wondered was a bit left field for me.
If you like Pride and Prejudice, and you aren’t easily offended (there is some lame attempt of social commentary on today’s issues) then pick it up, for sure!
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