What if Jane Austen set Pride and Prejudice in contemporary Cincinnati? In Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep; American Wife) turns an iconic comedy of manners into a sly and entertaining social satire and story of loves lost and found.
The characters and plot are immediately recognizable, though the novel is wholly a Sittenfeld original. New Yorker Liz Bennet is a magazine writer who returns to Cincinnati to help care for her father after his heart attack. Jane, the eldest sister, is a yoga teacher undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments; Mary is pursuing her third online master's degree; Katie and Lydia spend all their time working out at a trendy gym. Mrs. Bennet engineers an invitation to a Fourth of July picnic so that the sisters can meet erstwhile reality television star Chip Bingley and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy. Liz and Darcy naturally take an immediate dislike to each other, while Jane and Chip's instant mutual attraction is complicated by Jane's situation.
Eligible is so entertaining that one might easily miss its bigger themes--the futility of judging others based on appearances or social proprieties, their color, gender, circumstance or secret passion for bowling. Finding love means learning not to be judgmental--Darcy asks, when love comes, "Who cares what anyone else thinks?" --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer