Thursday 17 August 2017

Book Review: Eligible - C. Sittenfeld





"Mrs Bennet looked from her end of the table to her husband’s. “If any of our girls marry doctors, it will meet my needs, yes”, she said to him. “But, Fred, if it gets them out of the house, I daresay it will meet yours, too.”

I really loved Sittenfeld's The american wife so I was curios to read his latest novel.
Eligible is a modern American adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice. The names of the characters remain the same, the location is Cincinnati instead of London, the plot is the same so you don't really get any surprises or you are massively anticipated what could happen in the end, you know it already (if you have read Pride and prejudice, that's it)!
It might not be a masterpiece of originality or of "high" literature, but all in all it is a very pleasant novel, you read it quickly consider the number of pages, the characters are all quite funny in their own ways and Liz maintains that qualities that the original Elizabeth Bennet has got and she is likable for. Mrs Bennet is still a nosey, not very cleaver, hypochondriac woman and in addition in this modern version she is also racist. Mr Bennet is here as well full of British sense of humour and his dialogues are the one I preferred in the book.
So in summary a nice read for summer, very distant from The American wife I am afraid.

Overall rating: 6,5      Plot: 6,5     Writing style: 6,5      Cover:  4



Title: Eligible
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Publisher: The Borough Press
Pages: 544
Publication year: 2017

Plot:
For sisters Liz and Jane, coming home to suburban Cincinnati means being paraded at the Lucas family’s BBQ, where burgers are served alongside the eligible men. But it’s difficult to focus on re-booting their love lives when the family’s mock-Tudor house starts to crumble around them. Yet as their mother reminds them, it’s not every day you meet a pair of handsome single doctors . . 

The Author:
CURTIS SITTENFELD is the bestselling author of five novels: PrepThe Man of My DreamsAmerican WifeSisterland, and Eligible. Her first story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It, will be published in 2018. Her books have been selected by The New York TimesTimeEntertainment Weekly, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into twenty-five languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Esquire, and her non-fiction has appeared in The New York TimesTime, Vanity Fair, The AtlanticSlate, and on “This American Life.” A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Curtis has interviewed Michelle Obama for Time; appeared as a guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” CBS’s “Early Show,” and PBS’s Newshour

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