Of all the modern retellings in The Austen Project – UK publisher Borough Press's pairing of six best-selling contemporary authors with Jane Austen's six complete works – American author Curtis Sittenfeld's Pride and Prejudice rewrite has been the most eagerly anticipated.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that the union of an author of Sittenfeld's acclaim with one of the most popular and beloved novels of all time – one that just happens to have provided the blueprint for romance fiction as we know it – is, in theory, a match made in heaven. The question, of course, is whether Eligible lives up to this much-hyped promise?
In short: yes, Sittenfeld is simply too skilled a writer to have produced anything less than a novel which is effortlessly entertaining and delightfully readable. Whether it lives up to the original, that’s a stickier question, not to mention something of a near-impossible demand.
Sittenfeld exchanges rural Regency England for modern-day Cincinnati. The Bennet family live in a "sprawling eight-bed Tudor" (that's mortgaged to the hilt) in the upmarket Hyde Park neighbourhood, a community in which the arrival of eligible bachelor Chip Bingley is heralded by both the gossipmongers at the local country club and his recent appearance on the "juggernaut reality television show Eligible" (think the real-life version, The Bachelor), at the conclusion of which, rather than walking off into the sunset with his bride-to-be, he "wept profusely" and pleaded a lack of "soul connection" with either of the women vying for his heart.
Chip is in possession of the same good fortune as his Austenian counterpart (his family made a mint in plumbing fixtures), but he’s a far cry from playboy about town; instead he’s an ER doctor with a degree from Harvard Medical School, where, incidentally, he met his “stand-offish” friend and subsequent colleague, Fitzwilliam Darcy, neurosurgeon extraordinaire.
You'd be forgiven for thinking it's starting to sound more Grey's Anatomy than BBC period drama, but after these initial, and admittedly rather fun deviations, Sittenfeld faithfully tracks the narrative twists and turns of the original.
It’s undoubtedly the contemporary substitutions, however, that provide the reader with the most amusement. One of the problems of retelling such a familiar story is that the reader knows exactly how it’s going to end, which means the element of surprise has to be injected in other ways.
The Bennet girls, while still eminently identifiable, have undergone some mild modifications. In order for their mother’s fears of their impending spinsterhood (as well as Jane’s broodiness) to ring true today, Sittenfeld has aged Liz (Elizabeth) – a magazine journalist in New York – and Jane – a yoga instructor, also living in the Big Apple – by 20-odd years so that they are each on the cusp of 40.
Kitty and Lydia meanwhile are vacuous, work-phobic CrossFit fanatics; and Mary, in a contemporary twist on the drab bluestocking, is pursuing her third online master’s degree.
While some more inspired, not to mention rather canny updates appear in the form of casting Mr Collins as a Silicon Valley coder instead of an sycophantic clergyman, and making the main source of the Bennets’ anguish a lack of health insurance rather than male heirs.
Herein lies the rub. One can't simply directly transpose the earlier narrative as it stands onto contemporary situations and characters. Alexander McCall Smith tried that with his retelling of Emma and the result was decidedly dull and lifeless.
Novels inspired by predecessors can be wonderful – when it comes to Pride and Prejudice, Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones is a case in point – but, in updating the novel in a way that still rings true enough to warrant the "retelling" label, it's inevitable that something is going to be lost in translation.
It's not that Sittenfeld can't do acute and biting class-centric social observation; her debut, Prep, set in an exclusive Massachusetts boarding school, actually proved her something of a master, and Sisterland, a story about twins who share a gift of intuition, attested to her innate grasp of complicated family dynamics; but trying to replicate Austen's particular take on these is a daunting task.
I say none of this to put you off though, there is so very much to enjoy in Eligible and Sittenfeld's emulation is clearly full of the sincerest flattery and admiration. My only word of warning: just don't expect the wit and wisdom of Austen.
Lucy Scholes is a freelance writer based in London.
