The author of four previous novels, Sittenfeld has a solid track record with high-stakes dramas of social conformity. The first three entries were not overwhelming successes, and many "Janeites" have been holding their breath, waiting for Curtis Sittenfeld's "Pride and Prejudice" retelling to rescue the series.
To recreate those high stakes and subtle subversions in a modern romantic comedy is the unenviable task of any Austen update, including the six commissioned from popular and critically lauded novelists a few years back by the Austen Project. The insistence that he not even bore her? That's downright subversive. For an Austen heroine who can't inherit property and has no safe or legal means of earning money, the quest for financial security with a partner who won't either beat or betray her is nothing less than a survival story. And from the hand of Curtis Sittenfeld, Pride & Prejudice is catapulted into our modern world singing out with hilarity and truth.It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen's novels, insofar as they concern women's efforts to find rich, witty, handsome husbands, are "chick lit." Fair enough, but as an excuse for not reading Austen (and I've heard 'em all, usually from men), total bunk. As Liz is consumed by her father’s mounting medical bills, her wayward sisters and Cousin Willie trying to stick his tongue down her throat, it isn’t only the local chilli that will leave a bad aftertaste.īut where there are hearts that beat and mothers that push, the mysterious course of love will resolve itself in the most entertaining and unlikely of ways. Jane is entranced by Chip Liz, sceptical of Darcy. But Chip's friend, haughty neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, can barely stomach Cincinnati or its inhabitants. Ĭhip Bingley is not only a charming doctor, he’s a reality TV star too. That is, until the Lucas family’s BBQ throws them in the way of some eligible single men. For two successful women in their late thirties, it really is too much to bear. Soon enough they are being berated for their single status, their only respite the early morning runs they escape on together. Once they are under the same roof, old patterns return fast. They’ve come home to suburban Cincinnati to get their mother to stop feeding their father steak as he recovers from heart surgery, to tidy up the crumbling Tudor-style family home, and to wrench their three sisters from their various states of arrested development. The Bennet sisters have been summoned from New York City.
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