Pardon me – but you will be limited as to number – only three at once.” “Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty.
“I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I?” – (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body’s assent) – “Do not you all think I shall?”
The turning point of Emma and its most shocking moment is Emma’s slight but stinging gibe at poor, talky, tiresome Miss Bates. Of these good-mannered, good-natured women, Emma Woodhouse is the most self-confident, even to the point of self-congratulation, and thereby runs a risk, for her author sees presumptuousness as a fault to which even diffidence is preferable. Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune’s senior editor for books.M ost of her readers would agree, I think, that Jane Austen’s heroines, even the witty Elizabeth Bennet, do not indulge in hateful or spiteful talk. The previous Austen rewrites - Val McDermid’s retelling of “Northanger Abbey,” Joanna Trollope’s version of “Sense & Sensibility,” and Alexander McCall Smith’s “Emma” - have gotten mixed reviews. The biggest sin, though, is Sittenfeld’s lackluster Liz - snappish, not witty bossy, not proud and occasionally what my mother would call “potty-mouthed.” Darcy, for his part, has a habit of responding to her tirades with a lugubrious “indeed.” (Does anyone still use that word? I mean, anyone in Cincinnati?) Bennet’s passion to marry off her daughters to rich gentlemen doesn’t ring true, and Sittenfeld had a heck of a time finding an appropriate modern-day transgression for the wild Mr. And yet this might be a project that was flawed in its conception: So much of Austen’s premise does not translate to modern times. Sittenfeld is a skilled writer, and the book is an entertaining, fast read. Bingley a doctor and star of a TV reality show. Liz is a magazine writer, Darcy a brain surgeon, Jane a placid yoga teacher and Mr. Sittenfeld follows the plot and characters of Austen’s novel scrupulously, though she moves the action to present-day Cincinnati. Does the world need another version of “Pride and Prejudice”? I mean, without zombies? In “Eligible,” the fourth installment of the Austen Project - the retelling of Jane Austen’s novels in modern settings - Curtis Sittenfeld has turned her prodigious talents to updating the story of feisty Elizabeth Bennet and the standoffish Mr.
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