Eligible: A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice (Austen Project, #4)

by Curtis Sittenfeld

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Wonderfully tender and hilariously funny, Eligible tackles gender, class, courtship, and family as Curtis Sittenfeld reaffirms herself as one of the most dazzling authors writing today.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE TIMES (UK)

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.

Praise for Eligible

“Even the most ardent Austenite will soon find herself seduced.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“Blissful . . . Sittenfeld modernizes the classic in such a stylish, witty way you’d guess even Jane Austen would be pleased.”—People (book of the week)

“[A] sparkling, fresh contemporary retelling.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[Sittenfeld] is the ideal modern-day reinterpreter. Her special skill lies not just in her clear, clean writing, but in her general amusement about the world, her arch, pithy, dropped-mike observations about behavior, character and motivation. She can spot hypocrisy, cant, self-contradiction and absurdity ten miles away. She’s the one you want to leave the party with, so she can explain what really happened. . . . Not since Clueless, which transported Emma to Beverly Hills, has Austen been so delightedly interpreted. . . . Sittenfeld writes so well—her sentences are so good and her story so satisfying. . . . As a reader, let me just say: Three cheers for Curtis Sittenfeld and her astute, sharp and ebullient anthropological interest in the human condition.”—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review

“A clever, uproarious evolution of Austen’s story.”—The Denver Post

“If there exists a more perfect pairing than Curtis Sittenfeld and Jane Austen, we dare you to find it. . . . Sittenfeld makes an already irresistible story even more beguiling and charming.”—Elle

“A playful, wickedly smart retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.”—BuzzFeed

“Sittenfeld is an obvious choice to re-create Jane Austen’s comedy of manners. [She] is a master at dissecting social norms to reveal the truths of human nature underneath.”—The Millions

“A hugely entertaining and surprisingly unpredictable book, bursting with wit and charm.”—The Irish Times

“An unputdownable retelling of the beloved classic.”—PopSugar

• ISBN10: 0399566848
• ISBN13: 9780399566844
• Publish Date: 19 April 2016 (first published 2 March 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Diversified Publishing
• Imprint: Random House Large Print
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 656
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780399566844

Reviews

[mrs_mander_reads]

I listened to this book on audio, and while I loved the narrator, getting to the end felt like forever. It didn't move as fast as I would have liked, so I might recommend reading versus listening, especially if you're an anxious reader like I am.
The characters were beautifully written, and the entire story still held onto Pride and Prejudice while still being updated in a believable manner. There were twists and turns along the way that I never would have expected - I fully intend to read this again, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys romance and the original P&P.

[Nicole Lynn]

3.5/5 stars. Cute modernization that had me chuckling a few times. Not my favorite modernization, but I feel like as I could appreciate/like it more as I reread in the future. Review to come!

[Liz (Bent Bookworm)]

Eligible is one of those books I was just seeing everywhere, and then by some stroke of fortune my tiny little library had it on the “new reads” shelf. I was so excited! I was even the first person to check it out.:) Then of course I discoverd that it is one of a series of Austen retellings called The Austen Project, and of course now I must read all of them. The life of a book addict is hard, I’m telling you! Anyway, on to the review.

Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife.

Eligible is a retelling of Jane Austen’s much beloved Pride and Prejudice. If you haven’t read it, you’re probably not going to appreciate this book nearly as much. Just like the original, it centers around a rich and slowly disintegrating (both money and relationship-wise) family that truly sometimes seems rather ridiculous…while at the same time you can’t help but empathize.

The parallels are obvious at once. The first couple of chapters – which are very short, by the way, the 488 page book has 181 chapters – are almost exact copies of the first bit of P&P, reworked in a modern setting and language. I was nervous the entire book would be like this, but it turns out it’s just setting our minds back towards the original. While the storyline’s correspondence is clear, Sittenfeld manages to put fresh life and creative twists on the plot of the original. Her prose is sparkling.

It wasn’t a secret that her mother fetishized all manner of domestic decor.

I quite literally choked on my coffee as I was reading. The humorous bits come upon you unawares. You’ve been given fair warning! She’s also managed to sneak in some heart-stirring lines that hit rather close to home (which also caught me by surprise).

Since Liz’s adolescence, when viewing television commercials that celebrated the ostensibly unconditional love of mothers for their children…she had felt like a foreign exchange student observing the customs of another country.

I was really wondering how Lydia’s elopement would be handled, since honestly, in a culture where even single motherhood is no longer taboo or shocking, what would have the same level of sucker punch that her story would have had in the 18th century? To lay it all out would be quite a spoiler, but let me assure you – she pulls it off. She more than pulls it off. With all the bells and whistles. It is very suitably altered to today’s environment and I think that in many traditional or typical families, the reaction portrayed is actually rather accurate.

Sittenfeld did substantially alter two of the more minor characters. While I was slightly disappointed she didn’t manage to hold true to the originals for purity’s sake, the changes really did make the story in some ways. Most of the other characters were easily identified not only by name but by their attitudes. Charlotte Lucas, for instance, while definitely more modern, is just as placid and unromantic as in Austen’s tale – but with a slightly warmer feel to her overall.

“Lizzy, nothing could bring me greater happiness than to have you staying at my house, freaking out about a boy.”

My favorite moment overall was the infamous meeting of Darcy and Elizabeth at his house in Pemberley, which, in the original made me break out into laughter at the absurdity and discomfort of the entire thing – and Sittenfeld managed to give the same feel to her scene, only I squirmed even harder as I could definitely relate more to the modern Elizabeth. Darcy is of course his abominable self throughout, and now we see the attraction between him and Elizabeth flare into much more than shared glances and banter during a dance.

Overall, I loved this book. It surprised me, because I was quite prepared to hate it due to my fondness for the original. I really enjoyed how the main points of P&P were translated into fresh, modern events that, I think, gave us as modern readers the same impact that Austen’s tale would have given her Victorian readers. In the words of Mr. Bennet,

“To top what’s come so far, it had better have to do with alien abduction or bestiality.”

It’s not a heavy book. Despite it’s almost 500 pages, it’s a delightfully fluffy read. I can see people tearing it apart due to it’s constant (rather laughable) “first world problems,” but that’s a large part of the point, just as Austen was satirizing her own upper class set, so we can laugh at the ridiculousness of some of the Bennet’s problems. The writing is spectacular. Jane and Lizzy are just as lovable as we’ve always known them, and I think many people will relate to them in completely new ways after reading this book. I was sad when it was over but very satisfied.