Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Eligible is a page-turning romantic comedy which is very funny and entirely ridiculous: each of the short chapters is as unwholesomely addictive as a Pringle coated in crack cocaine. It’s clearly influenced by writers like Tina Fey, Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers. But that isn’t the point. Because with a certain punky insouciance, Sittenfeld has closely modelled her entertainment on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
The Bennet sisters are now a quintet of unmarried women aged between 20 to 40, hailing from Cincinnati: Liz Bennet is a journalist working for Mascara magazine in New York; her elder sister Jane is a yoga instructor, her younger sister Mary is a bookish student and the still younger Kitty and Lydia lead an underemployed, moneyed and faintly Kardashian-ish existence, living at home with their well-to-do parents. Jane is to find herself romantically attached to a certain Chip Bingley, the star of the TV reality-dating show Eligible, in which dozens of attractive women compete for his approval.
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