The Three Weissmanns of Westport

The Three Weissmanns of Westport 

by Cathleen Schine

Reviewed by Gerti

“The Three Weissmanns of Westport” is Cathleen Schine’s take on Jane Austen’s classic novel, “Sense and Sensibility.” If you are unfamiliar with the hundred-year-old original, it was about two sisters, one practical and the other emotional, who have to survive their father’s death and their subsequent poverty. Being single women, they also look for and find romance, although the road to that isn’t smooth either. Likewise, Schine has two female protagonists in this story, Annie (the practical sister) and Miranda (the impulsive one). Both girls move to a cottage in Westport, CT, from New York City not because of their father’s death, but because he has found a mistress and decided to divorce their mother, Betty. She receives a kind offer from her wealthy Cousin Lou to move into an unrented beach property of his after Joseph Weissman freezes the couple’s assets and she can no longer afford their Central Park West apartment.

Seventy-eight-year-old Joe met his young mistress, Felicity, at work, and while he feels he is being generous to his wife, it is obvious to his step-daughters that he is not. Annie knows all about bad men, since she has been divorced before, but she also has two grown sons whom she loves, and a great job at a bookstore in the city. In fact it is Felicity who introduces her to her famous author brother, Frederick Barrow. He does a wonderful reading of his literary work’s there at the bookstore, and Annie and Frederick have a secret tryst. When Frederick’s snobby grown children try to keep Annie away from their father, little do they suspect an even worse fate is in store for him, thanks to a minx of a house sitter named Amber. Fans of “Sense and Sensibility” will recognize that Amber is the reincarnated Lucy Steele, who in the Austen book “steals” an eligible man away from the sensible sister while pretending to be her friend.

Miranda’s life is also falling apart in parallel with that of her mother. She has never been able to settle down and marry (since she likes falling in love so much) but has built a successful career as a literary agent with her own agency. Now however, it seems some memoirs she has published were mere fabrications, and her reputation and her business falter, bankrupting her. She runs away to live with her mother in Westport, only to fall in love with a handsome local actor named Kit Maybank. He saved her during an ill-fated kayak trip during a thunderstorm. Unfortunately, he has a young son named Henry and seems to use Miranda more as a babysitter than a love interest. He leaves as soon as a good part becomes available in LA, and Miranda realizes she loved being a mother to Henry more than she loved Kit. So when the child’s mother Leanne comes on the scene, Miranda naturally falls in love with her, too.

Schine’s story is charming and modern. Austen fans will recognize who each character is meant to be, but I don’t know whether the ending will satisfy them, or me! I did think Schine’s writing was very good. She used very clever phrases and seems, like Austen, to understand human emotion and evil motivations very well.

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.