Book #33: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have read the other three books that have come out from the Austen Project--modern retellings of all of Jane Austen's books--and this, of course, was my most highly anticipated. Can anyone really retell Pride and Prejudice in a way that will be satisfying to anyone? (I mean, I read plenty of Jane Austen fan fiction, but it's a high bar.) And yet, I totally loved this book. Once I started it this afternoon, it was hard to put it down. (Obviously, since I finished it this evening and it's 500 (short) pages.) I think my favorite part of it was how Sittenfeld (Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, surprisingly) updated the Bennet family for the 21st century, how the three youngest Bennets are boomerang kids who went to college and moved back home and never got jobs, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have spent all their money and are bankrupt, and how Jane and Liz live in New York and rarely come home to visit their family in Cincinnati. And Bingley! Was a contestant on the "Bachelor" (or "Eligible" as it is called in the book)! I loved that twist, and how they incorporated it into the end. I think some purists would not appreciate all of the twists and things in this book, but I didn't mind them and it was pretty fun to pick out the events of the original book happening in today's world. The thing that I REALLY didn't like at the beginning was Liz's relationship with Wickham and how he was a sleazy married man--someone she had spent 15 years of her life pining after? That does NOT sound like the Lizzy that we know and love, and it really irritated me. And I also didn't love Jane's whole artificial insemination situation either--it seemed a bit contrived. But everything else was fun and definitely worth a read. I do love me some Jane Austen though. It never gets old.