The Nature of Things

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld My rating: 4 of 5 stars It has been 200 years since Jane Austen wrote her books that are still cherished by lovers of a good story. Those books have been often imitated, updated, and pastiched by other writers. Nothing wrong with that. Writers steal from each other all the time. After all, there is nothing new under the sun, and, anyway, it was all written before by Shakespeare 500 years ago. Pride and Prejudice , Austen's most beloved book, is, naturally, the one most copied by others, and Eligible is just the latest effort on that front. Eligible is part of something called "The Austen Project" in which modern authors are invited to reimagine her books. It is the fourth in the series. Emma , Sense and Sensibility , and Northanger Abbey have already been done by Alexander McCall Smith, Joanna Trollope, and Val McDermid, respectively. I haven't read the other books, but if they are on a par with this one, they would very much be worth...