Delight in this tale for its hilarious and endearing family drama, but don’t expect to get the same level of romantics and...
Sittenfeld takes on the challenge of modernizing Pride and Prejudice as part of the Austen Project in her fifth novel (Sisterland, 2013, etc.).
Gone are the rolling hills of the English countryside. In Sittenfeld's latest, Longbourn has been transformed into an oversized and neglected Tudor in the upscale Hyde Park neighborhood of Cincinnati. The Bennet sisters range in age from 23 to pushing 40, all unwed but certainly not inexperienced. Kitty and Lydia are politically incorrect CrossFit fanatics; Mary cares little about the crumbling state of her family’s affairs as she collects online degrees; Jane is an ethereal beauty of a yoga instructor who wants very badly to become a mother; and Liz, well, Liz is a New York–based magazine writer who fixes everyone else’s problems as the Bennets find themselves together again after a health scare (and Mr. Bennet casually reveals he has no health insurance, oh, and two mortgages…). The modernization of this classic story allows for a greater and more humorous range of incompetency and quirks; for example, Mrs. Bennet now has Valium and online shopping to distract her from constant anxiety. These familiar characters must deal with issues far beyond class and the all-important institution of marriage; everything from sexuality to racism to eating disorders and single parenthood factor in. And it’s all written in a giddily charming blend of 19th-century novel–meets–21st-century casual swearing: Liz finds her enemy, Caroline Bingley, “looking bitchily gorgeous in an expensive frock.” Oh, it’s about time we get to the Bingleys and our man of the hour, pensive neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy. As the Bennets deal with financial ruin, Cincinnati welcomes a new doctor, Chip Bingley (and friends), to town; he's recently starred on the Bachelor-like reality show Eligible…which (surprise) did not end in love. In the end, it takes an exceedingly long time, with Liz busy being the “voice of reason amid a cacophony of foolishness,” for Darcy to feel significant to the story.
Delight in this tale for its hilarious and endearing family drama, but don’t expect to get the same level of romantics and Darcy-inflicted swoon that make the original untouchable.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6832-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
PERSPECTIVES
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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