I love Pride and Prejudice. It has been one of my all-time favorite books since high school. I had re-read it several times. I've seen and loved various film/tv adaptations that have come out, including and perhaps especially the Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube. Seriously...if you haven't checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?

I am a sucker for a good P&P re-telling. To be honest, I'm a sucker for even a mediocre P&P re-telling. I find the story and the characters so compelling and timeless. Elizabeth Bennet is one of the best female characters I've ever read.

I say all of this because I feel like it is important to understand that when I gave this book 1 star out of 5, it's because I truly, truly hated it.

First of all, I didn't like the way this book was written. The chapters were very short. It seemed like the author was trying to infuse a quirky tone to the book by structuring it that way, but really all it did was create a choppy narrative and poor pacing.
It was also extremely info-dumpy, especially in the first 75 pages or so. Not much actually happens with the characters in those pages. We are given basically a complete history on the Bennets and especially Jane and Liz. There are complete chapters of totally unnecessary backstory and details that just don't affect the narrative or add anything to the development of the characters.
I also disliked that they aged the daughters so drastically. Jane is 40, Liz 38, Mary 30, Kitty 26(?), and Lydia 23. It just didn't work for me. The plot points and actions that would've made sense if the girls were much younger (like Jane not paying her own rent and all three of the younger girls still living at home while it's falling apart around them and not being willing to lift a finger to help) didn't make sense at all to me. They acted like teenagers and twenty-somethings, so why not KEEP them teenagers and twenty-somethings?


In the end, it all really comes down to the characters and their interactions with one another. P&P puts a great focus on character development. The result is a story with rich and interesting (not perfect. They definitely have flaws.) characters that are very relatable, even 200 years later. The only things that the characters in Eligible have in common with the characters in P&P are their names. I get that there are things that need to be modernized for a re-telling, but the essence of the characters should remain intact.

Jane is an almost 40 year old yoga instructor living on her own in New York City. Despite the fact that her parents pay her rent (which has to be astronomical, considering she is in NYC), she decides that she wants to have a baby. Because she is not in a relationship, she decides the best course of action is to get artificially inseminated. She has to pay for this herself (You know, like how most 40 year olds who live on their own have to pay for their own shit. ), and laments the fact that she has to give up going out to restaurants, getting her hair cut, and going to her favorite boutique 'with its elegantly tailored $400 pencil skirts and luxurious $300 sweaters'. So, she can't afford to pay her own rent, but she doesn't see any problem with shelling out hundreds of dollars on one item of clothing? Not to mention the fact that she can't pay her own rent but thinks bringing a kid into the world is a great plan...only 20 pages in, and I'm not a big fan of this version of Jane Bennet. She would never be so selfish and materialistic, in my opinion.

Chip Bingley (Yup. Chip.) is a part-time doctor, part-time reality star. He was in a show similar to the Bachelor called...wait for it...Eligible. There's not much I can say about his character, as we don't see a whole lot of him throughout the book and what we do see is pretty bland, to be honest. My biggest problem with his characterization is that I don't see Bingley as someone who would EVER, under any circumstances, be on a reality show. Bingley and Jane are both quiet, introverted people. They wouldn't want their business being displayed like that to everyone. The last hundred or so pages deal with Jane and Chip getting married on camera in this big production, and I just think that is ridiculous.

Liz Bennet. I don't even know where to begin. First of all, I hate that she goes by 'Liz'. I'm not even sure why. I don't have anything against the name, but I just don't like it. Anyway, here goes. I despise the characterization of Elizabeth Bennet in this book. She is by no means perfect in P&P. She is very quick to judge and very stubborn, especially where Mr. Darcy is concerned. But at the end of the day, Elizabeth Bennet as written by Jane Austen is a strong, smart, witty, and independent person. Liz Bennet, on the other hand, is just plain unlikable. She is also a pathetic doormat. One of the first things we learn about her is that she has been in an ongoing relationship with a married man; a married man who she has been pining after for over 15 years. (His name is Jasper Wick...yes, he's the updated version of Wickham.) She met him when he has a girlfriend and when they broke up he jumped into a new relationship with someone new. When she finally asked him, "What about us?" He said, "But we'd be the real thing, and I don't know if I'm ready for that. You're such an important friend and I don't want to lose you." So instead of being the strong, independent woman Elizabeth Bennet should be, she lets herself be strung along for another decade until he gets married...at which point she sobs, runs away, and stops speaking to him...
When they meet again five years later, he tells her that his relationship with his wife is all for show at this point because she has a rich grandmother who they're waiting on to die so she can collect her inheritance. And she's totally okay with this. Early in the book she actually thinks 'Depending on how long Susan's grandmother took to die, it could be several more years before Jasper and Susan officially divorced and, Liz imagined, she and Jasper moved in together. What kind of person thinks that way and doesn't see the wrongness of it? It's disgusting, and it's absolutely NOT Elizabeth Bennet.

Darcy wasn't really in the book much, and by the time he was I honestly was just trying to get through the book so I could move on with my life. Their interaction later in the book when she goes to San Francisco were okay, but I really didn't like their 'hate sex' stuff earlier in the book. But I absolutely hated that he told the Mrs. Bennet that being transgender was a 'birth defect'. I get that he doesn't actually feel that was and was just trying to get Mrs. Bennet to get over her bigotry toward Ham, but I hated it.

And now we come to the worst of the worst. Mrs. Bennet. Now, the Mrs. Bennet in the original P&P was a lot of things. She was annoying, overbearing, and single-minded to the point of improper when it came to her quest to marry off her daughters. She was concerned with money because she knew that five ladies living in that time had absolutely no prospect of providing for themselves and would need good marriages to ensure their well-being, especially considering the fact that they would not be able to keep their house if/when her husband passed. At the end of the day, she loved her children and wanted what was best for them.

Mrs. Bennet in Eligible is a racist, bigoted, gold-digging, status-obssessed piece of garbage. Here are a few examples:

"While not an overt anti-Semite, Mrs. Bennet was prone to making declarations about almost all religious and ethnic minorities that were often uncomfortable to their listeners."

(While talking about Lydia's boyfriend) "Oh, dear. Does ROTC mean his family couldn't afford tuition?"

(when looking for a realtor) "Liz wasn't sure she should contact him. The reason she wasn't certain was that Shane was black and her mother was racist."

"As with her anti-Semitism, Mr.s Bennet's racism was of the conversational, innuendo-laden variety. She would never be so ignorant as to announce that black people were less intelligent or moral than their white counterparts, but without compunction she'd tell Liz not to shop at the Kroger in Walnut Hills because it was 'dirty,' and once at Christmas when Liz had suggested giving Mervetta a cashmere sweater, Mrs. Bennet had said, "For heaven's sake, Lizzy, Mervetta wouldn't appreciate cashmere.""

(Regarding a female couple who Jane is friends with) "I did always think she had very manly posture."

(on Kitty's relationship with a black man) "Liz, I don't know if Kitty and Shane are serious, but life can be very hard for mulatto children."

And then there is the whole section on how she deals with finding out that Lydia is dating a transgender man. I would be quoting entire chapters if I started getting into that. Now, I understand that there are ignorant racists everywhere. I get it. In theory, writing a racist character isn't a problem, because they actually do exist in this world, and in the book it's not like it's looked at as an okay thing. But I have two problems with it in this book. The first is that while the other characters know that it is an awful way to think and behave, none of them call out Mrs. Bennet on the things she says. The closest that anyone ever comes to standing up to her is after she talks about Kitty and Shane having 'mulatto' children, Liz says, "I wouldn't say that to either of them." And that's it. Not to mention the fact that there are other times in the book where Mr. Bennet and even Liz herself spew out preconceived stereotypes that are absolutely ridiculous. Liz says that Mary can't be gay because she's 'not interesting enough'. My second issue with this characterization is that it just doesn't fit in with the essence of who that character is. She should be exasperating, but good-hearted underneath all her convoluted schemes to marry off her daughters. I hated this iteration of Mrs. Bennet.

Also, the way everyone freaks out when Ham and Lydia run off is ridiculous. They race after her trying to get her back and even think about calling the police. Ummm...she's 23! A grown-ass woman. What the heck? Yet another reason I don't understand why they aged the characters if they were just going to act like they are teenagers...

At the end of the day, if you are a fan of P&P and want to experience a great modern take on it, I highly recommend the Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube. Pass on this one and call it good.

Who might like this: Someone who hasn't read the source material...even then, just go read the original book instead.