Prom and Prejudice

Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

Reviewed by Gerti

I wasn’t but a few lines into this book when I realized what a cute and clever sendup Elizabeth Eulberg had written. “Prom and Prejudice” is her riff on Jane Austen’s classic novel of British literature, “Pride and Prejudice”, and Eulberg treats her story as an honest tribute, with a good amount of humor and style.

Of course the main character remains Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, and she still lives at Longbourn, but in this version it is Longbourn Academy, which is a Connecticut high school for mean girls who also happen to be trust-fund babies. Her best friend/roommate is a girl named Jane, unlike in Austen’s original novel, where Jane is her elder sister. Jane’s younger sister here is Lydia, who remains a trouble-making wench, just as Austen conceived her over a hundred years ago.

This book revolves around what to Longbourn Academy is the biggest social event of the year – the prom. And of course, Jane longs to be asked by her boyfriend, Charles Bingley. His evil sister Caroline, however, plots to separate the two of them, mainly because Charles’ friend, Will Darcy, has his eye on Jane’s friend Lizzie, even though she is just a scholarship student at Longbourn.

Like in the original, the struggle between rich and poor is evident here, with Lizzie and her fellow scholarship student Charlotte victims of naughty remarks and even nastier pranks by the rich girls at the Academy. Their snobbishness is shared by the kids from the neighboring single-sex boys school, Pemberley Academy. One exception seems to be George “Wick” Wickham, who befriends Lizzie at the coffee shop where she works. He was tossed out of Pemberley Academy, and claims it was because of Will Darcy. But as in Austen’s original, “Wick” is not being entirely truthful to Lizzie, and has been using his rich friends, girlfriends (and even their minor sisters!) in unsavory and sometimes illegal ways.

This version of “Pride and Prejudice” by Eulberg is a delight to read, as it is not bogged down by Austen’s sometime dense and intricate linguistic style. I like how Eulberg makes an effort to include most of Austen’s original characters, although she changes their relationship somewhat, if not their personalities. I don’t like the ending, as Darcy and Lizzie decide NOT to attend the prom after all, because that doesn’t jibe with the flavor of the original, where Lizzie and Darcy flaunt convention by disregarding their family money when making their love match, but still agree to marry and not just run off together, like the dishonorable Wickham and Lydia.

Still, this book will be a delight to read for any fan of Austen’s original novel, and I highly recommend it to teen readers and older. Readers of Eulberg’s other famous novel, “The Lonely Hearts Club,” may use this text to give them a leg-up on Austen’s classical plotline without bogging them down in antiquated language.