Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld had been on my to-read list for a long while when it was nominated as our next book club book. I was really excited because sometimes I find I need a little push to read certain books. As the cover of this one mentions, it is a "modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice" which is a book I read so long ago, I'm not sure it even counts. Of course, I've seen the film version as well as a modernized film version and I am familiar enough with the storyline that I wasn't in need of a refresher. In this version, Liz is a thirty-eight-year-old special features writer for a women's magazine and has been happily living in New York for more than fifteen years. Her sister Jane, almost forty (GASP!), is a yoga instructor also living in NYC. The remaining Bennet sisters still live at home in Cincinnati with their parents in their rambling, and crumbling, family home. Darcy is a neurosurgeon and Bingley (who goes by his first name Chip) is a doctor in the Emergency Room. Two very eligible men, five single women, and a mother determined to see her daughters married well. That is Pride and Prejudice, but what Sittenfeld does with it...well.

P&P is one of those books that women the world over claim as their favorite. "It's so romantic!" I, however, have never felt that way. I don't find rude, ill-mannered men attractive and while the original Darcy overcomes whatever social handicaps he possesses to tell Elizabeth how he really feels, it was always too little, too late for me. I've also always been irritated by the Bennet family, Jane and Elizabeth aside; they are really awful. At least in the original work, there is a good reason for Elizabeth to stay with, and defend, her family, and for her sisters to all still live at home. In the updated version, when all of the sisters are meant to be fully grown adults, I just can't understand their lack of independence and responsibility. Every fault or irritation I felt with the original Bennet sisters and mother are only exacerbated in Eligible. Lydia and Kitty are both in their early twenties and plenty old enough to be self-sufficient, but neither is. They are rude and obnoxious beyond belief and really aren't likable at all. Mrs. Bennet is so loathsome and overly dramatic as to make her intolerable as a character. Even Mr. Bennet loses his charm in this updated book.

As hard as Sittenfeld tries to remake this classic into something modern and fun, what she really does is take a classic work of literature and shine a bright iPhone flashlight onto all the worst parts of it. She tries adding in a twist or two, shaking up a few of the characters, but it just didn't work for me.