No one writes with Austen’s particular sensibility, and no one would really want to; she was perfectly of her time. But Sittenfeld is the ideal modern-day reinterpreter. Her special skill lies not just in her clear, clean writing, but in her general amusement about the world, her arch, pithy, dropped-mike observations about behavior, character and motivation. She can spot hypocrisy, cant, self-contradiction and absurdity 10 miles away. She’s the one you want to leave the party with, so she can explain what really happened.
As a long game of literary Mad Libs, Eligible is undeniably delightful. Sittenfeld’s cleverest move may be working a reality-TV dating show into her story. What might seem like a bit of pandering to pop taste is really a feat of metafictional satire ... It helps tremendously that Eligible moves along so breezily, but changing the scenery and the props isn’t sufficient to modernize Pride and Prejudice, even if such a thing could (or should) be done. We crave a witty vision of our culture commensurate with Austen’s of hers. Too often Eligible delivers humor that’s merely glib or crude.
Although there are glimpses of Ms. Sittenfeld’s storytelling talents in the novel’s opening chapters, “Eligible swiftly devolves into the glibbest sort of chick lit; it reads less like a homage or reimagining of Austen’s classic than a heavy-handed and deeply unfunny parody ... It’s not just that many of Ms. Sittenfeld’s characters often seem more like the Kardashians than Austen heroines, but that the entire tone of this novel feels off: The layered satire and irony in Pride and Prejudice have been replaced here with high-decibel mockery, just as Austen’s sense of irony has been supplanted by sophomoric jokes.
The five Bennet sisters and their parents speak to one another only in this style: peevish and self-assertive, relentlessly striving for wit through mere insult. Any differentiation of character is hard to perceive through the artificiality and monotony of the dialogue. Lydia and Kitty can be shown as more disagreeable than Liz and Jane only by the slightly greater coarseness of their language ... I wondered what could possess a writer to tie her novel so blatantly and rigidly to a very well-known one – taking the general plot and the name of every character, so that comparison with the original becomes as unavoidable as it is crushing.
I find it admirable that Sittenfeld adheres to Austen’s un-PC insistence that not all people are equally deserving or interesting. If only she did so a little more artfully! The comparisons that adaptations invite are particularly damaging to Sittenfeld, whose writing tends toward flatness. Her sentences possess little in the way of nuance or playfulness; they convey information, that is all ... The problem with Sittenfeld’s decision to make her Liz so wholly innocuous, without any edge that might make readers feel intimidated, is not that she is unfaithful to Austen. The reason to regret the change is that it results in a much duller book.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s sparkling, fresh contemporary retelling of the Jane Austen classic does not open with quite the same punch—'Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife'—but in almost every other way, the fizzy tale of the five Bennet sisters and their marriage-minded mother works beautifully in 21st-century Ohio.
The plot moves briskly at first, and it is fun guessing who’s who from Austen’s masterwork. Sittenfeld has a knack for nailing characters with a single phrase ... But you get to a point where you hear the writer’s wheels grinding (not spinning), and the attempt to inject current references into what started as satirical commentary becomes as trite as the subjects she tackles.
Sittenfeld's inventiveness in modernizing these plot points earns some chuckles and head-nods, but the flipside of such fidelity to the text is not pretty ... It says a lot that in this version of events, foul-mouthed Lydia comes off as not just the only Bennet sister willing to tell the truth, but the only character worth listening to at all. The third-act plot twist involving Lydia is Sittenfeld's biggest departure from Austen's original, and it has the unfortunate side effects of robbing the original plot of its best villain and casting the Bennet family as intolerant fossils. Liz's job is to appease and placate them. This does neither Austen nor chick lit any favors.
In its attentiveness to both class and romantic fantasy, Eligible shows Austen’s marriage plot all the reverence and ambivalence 21st-century America bestows on the institution itself...The result is an adaptation that feels at once deeply faithful and far more impious than any of the Austen updates that have come before.
Sittenfeld is a skilled writer, and the book is an entertaining, fast read. 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. The ditsy Mrs. 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. Wickham. (And failed, I’m afraid.) The biggest sin, though, is Sittenfeld’s lackluster Liz — snappish, not witty; bossy, not proud; and occasionally what my mother would call 'potty-mouthed.'”
Although Austen devotees may balk at the novel’s modernization — ditto its Americanization — Sittenfeld seems ideally suited to the task. Her breezy wit and sly social critiques capture the spirit, if not the tone, of Austen’s work ... Romantic readers may feel robbed by a stagnant finale filtered through the (literal) lens of an Eligible camera crew. The show’s restrictions hamstring both Liz’s romantic overtures and Sittenfeld’s imagination, leading to a more subdued climax than the book’s rabbit-pulsed heartbeat demands. Still, Eligible succeeds as a wry but wistful ode to modern courtship. The result is charming, diverting and compulsively readable — even for self-proclaimed cynics.
...[a] remarkably entertaining version of Austen's classic. Sittenfeld plucks the Bennet family from rural England in the 1800s and authentically plants it in contemporary Cincinnati ... some readers will 'mourn' the lack of restraint in Eligible, finding its humor too broad.
...give Sittenfeld props for diving into her chick-lit satire with gusto, and making interesting choices — some work better than others — about how to move the long-gone world of ballrooms and “marriageable” girls into the present ... Hey, these are tacky times. So put aside your prejudice, Janeites. Eligible is good for some giggles on the beach. And a little romance — as convoluted and tortuous as ever — never hurt, either.
If you know Austen’s original well, it’s a kick to spot the parallels. But you don’t need to have read classic literature to know that Sittenfeld’s knack for characterization and snappy dialogue — and her understanding of the mysteries of love — is a treat, and that her final act, in which all the characters are united on the set of Eligible, is pure screwball joy. Is it Austen? No. Is it fun? Oh, yes. In fact, Eligible is such fun that I can imagine it might lead a few new readers to Jane Austen. Which seems, in a topsy-turvy way, quite appropriate.
