But that’s a small quibble, one that won’t stop you from guzzling this down in one or two sittings. If there’s one thing that’s lost in this cross-century translation, it’s the utter romance of Pride and Prejudice (a run-down Midwestern Tudor is a far cry from Pemberley). The characters have kept all their original motivations, and Sittenfeld hews closely to Austen’s smart, satirical plot, substituting CrossFit, shopping, and reality TV for dances and teas. ‘Eligible’ is not a bad book, but it’s not really for me, and that’s fine. It may have been published 203 years ago, but the first line of Pride and Prejudice still crackles: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Curtis Sittenfeld’s sparkling, fresh contemporary retelling of the Jane Austen classic does not open with quite the same punch-“Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife”-but in almost every other way, the fizzy tale of the five Bennet sisters and their marriage-minded mother works beautifully in 21st-century Ohio. Sittenfeld has updated Austen to include contemporary issues and attitudes, but I can continue to enjoy and reread Austen’s original whenever I like.
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