Le Guin’s argument with the book takes a different shape-she objects to its “disagreeable,” “hateful,” or “spiteful” disposition, writing that few “could survive long amid the incessant sneers of the characters of Eligible, with the author hovering over them, pitiless as a horsefly, to deliver judgment.” By way of example, Le Guin cites Sittenfeld’s portrayal of Mary, who “was proof, Liz had concluded, of how easy it was to be unattractive and unpleasant.” But Le Guin might as well deliver her plaint straight to Austen, a writer of amused discrimination and occasional cruelty. It makes the tender Georgiana Darcy anorexic, as if to gently illumine the costs of characters’ focus on looks or to hint at the wide range of difficulties that grieve families.Īnd yet, as a different Times reviewer, Sarah Lyall, points out, “No one writes with Austen’s particular sensibility, and no one would really want to she was perfectly of her time.” Eligible’s language may be cruder and more casual than the decorous, corseted prose of the 19 th-century female novelist, but surely the alternative would strike today’s readers as both coy and overwrought. For Eligible features such dexterous twists as turning officious Catherine de Bourgh into a wise doyenne of second-wave feminism and thus repositioning the original’s attitude toward powerful women. Fielding did in Bridget Jones.” Again, I protest. Sittenfeld “also fails,” Kakutani writes, “to work the sort of entertaining improvisations on her material that Ms. A droning suitor morphs into an awkward tech bro. Darcy hold but neurosurgeon? Would modern-day Lydia be anything other than a gorgeous, foul-mouthed, Crossfit-obsessed party girl who sneers at Liz, a writer, “Do you ever pass up a chance to use a big word? Or do you find that circumlocution always magnifies life’s conviviality?” A subtly competitive ball becomes an overtly combative game night. Heckerling deftly used in Clueless.” Here I must disagree, as Sittenfeld’s analogies could not be more delightfully apt. Sittenfeld struggles to update the plot of Pride and Prejudice,” Kakutani says, “failing to find the effortless sorts of analogies Ms. What are the lady Eligible’s faults? “Ms.
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