Eligible: A Novel

            Billed as “a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice”, this contemporary version of Austen’s classic novel is written by Curtis Sittenfeld. As the original book is considered a satirical study of that era’s social customs, so is Eligible one of our time.

            Here we meet a 38-year-old Liz Bennett, an unmarried career woman living in New York City, where her sister Jane also lives.  They left their parents and three younger sisters back in their hometown of Cincinnati, but return to help out when their father undergoes heart bypass surgery. They find that the family’s lives are chaotic: the three younger sisters don’t work, Mrs. Bennett has an online shopping addiction, the family house is falling apart, and Mr. Bennett doesn’t have health insurance for himself and the family. The two eldest daughters try to help out as best they can. On the social front, Jane meets Chip Bingley, a physician at the local hospital and former contestant on the reality show Eligible, a take-off of the show Bachelor. Liz, in turn, meets neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy and takes an instant dislike to him. Eventually they become running partners and engage in “hate sex”.

            Many of the original characters are here with some updating and/or alteration. We become caught up with modern-day issues such as single parenting, eating disorders, transgender relationships, racism, and more. Although Eligible doesn’t completely follow the plot and the storyline isn’t as tender as that in Pride and Prejudice, its satirical bent makes it a hysterical read.  

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel

Author Janelle Brown has written a novel about three women from an affluent Los Angeles family and how they are forced to figuratively leave “LaLa Land” behind and learn to cope with reality. Janice, the wife of pharmaceutical company executive Paul Miller, expects to be fabulously wealthy when the company goes public. Instead, she is shocked to find out that Paul is leaving her for her best friend/tennis partner. Moreover, she discovers that several months earlier, she had unknowingly signed papers giving up rights to half of the money earned during the marriage. Her older daughter Margaret, publisher of a failed feminist magazine that has left her penniless, returns to help Janice cope. It’s also a convenient way for Margaret to hide out from creditors. Teenage daughter Lizzie, always plump and an outsider among her peers, finds new-found popularity when she joins the swim team, slims down and also becomes the school slut. But after hitting bottom, the only way to go is up; the Miller women wise up and decide to fight back. Their trip back to semi-normalcy is loaded with humorous and sarcastic turns of events involving divorce lawyers, drug-dealing pool boys, country club society, evangelical church members, and more.