Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld

51 reviews

caw281's review against another edition

This book is transphobic. It draws a parallel between a classic predator in the original novel to a lovely transgender man. Why the actual hell would she have done this. When I reached that part of the story, I could not continue.

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kearstinreading's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Eligible holds the promise of a modern and entertaining take on the timeless classic, Pride and Prejudice. With Liz as a magazine writer and Jane as a yoga instructor, the story's contemporary setting in New York City seems like an intriguing backdrop. However, as the plot unfolds, it quickly becomes apparent that this modern-day adaptation is far from being a favorite of mine.

The book starts with Liz and Jane rushing back to their family home in Cincinnati due to their father's health scare, only to discover a once-idyllic place now falling apart with financial problems, and a mother who seems unwilling to address them.

My initial excitement to dive into this book gradually turned into disappointment, mainly due to some questionable authorial choices. It feels as though the author tried to incorporate multiple storylines and character traits to cater to a broader audience. Unfortunately, these attempts went horribly wrong. The novel is marred by instances of transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, and references to eating disorders. Even beloved characters express opinions and say things that are not just out of character but also offensive, making you wonder why you ever rooted for them in the first place.

While I managed to finish the book, it's a read I wish I hadn't undertaken. The inclusion of these controversial plotlines is deeply disappointing and significantly detracts from the enjoyment of this modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

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dracula_but_slay's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Absolutely no hate to people who love romcoms. I’m sure most of them are good! I actually quite enjoy the original Pride and Prejudice, which is essentially the mother of all modern romcoms. Eligible, however, was quite possibly the worst reading experience I’ve ever had 🩷 I’m absolutely gobsmacked at how you can possibly fumble an adaptation of such a beloved classic this hard. Honestly, it’s kind of impressive. None of the characters felt like the originals in any way whatsoever. They’re all insufferable jerks who think they’re better than everyone else — and that’s not including if they’re also racist, homophobic, fatphobic, antisemitic, AND transphobic?!?!?? Yes, those are all very real qualities given to some of these characters (Mrs. Bennet being the most egregious example who quite literally is every type of -phobic and -ist the author could possibly think of). Is any meaningful commentary given on ANY of these issues? Ha, no. If you’re lucky Elizabeth will spout some smart comment condemning a thing, but it basically just amounts to “racism is bad 🤩” (or whatever equivalent for the topic at hand). Elizabeth herself probably suffered the most at the hands of the author. She is SO insufferable. She thinks she’s better than everyone yet constantly needs to tie herself to some man — including a married man! Yes, the beloved Elizabeth Bennet is a home wrecker!!!! Classy!!!! And if the man — married or otherwise — doesn’t work out, boy can you count on some strong self-pity that just NEVER ends and is overall miserable to read. As for the plot, if this wasn’t an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, I think I’d be totally lost. There are so many barely related tangents in this almost 500 page book it’s difficult to keep track of what’s happening. At one point the plot is literally “oh no the house has spiders and we can’t sell the house if it has spiders so we gotta kill the spiders but oh no people don’t wanna buy houses with spiders so we didn’t sell the house but we killed the spiders yay!” No I am not joking. The sheer amount of useless 1-2 page chapters probably doesn’t help. I don’t think an editor was consulted for this book and it shows. This also causes characters to be left out for large chunks of the story. I forgot BINGLEY, one of the MAIN LOVE INTERESTS, was a character until like the last 100 pages of the book. Also Charlotte and Mr. Collins are never heard from again after Elizabeth visits them. Basically, if the characters aren’t immediately important to the plot, you can just forget about them. Chances are high you won’t see them again (sorry to you Charlotte Lucas stans out there). Even the TITLE OF THE BOOK doesn’t have as much relevance as you’d think it would. The fictional reality show that is the book’s namesake comes up in the beginning and the end. It maybe takes up 200 pages of the book at most (although granted, I consider that a blessing given the hot mess that is Jane and Bingley’s wedding which yes, we do get to see. No, it is not very enjoyable). All of this, combined with the bizarre timeline that I can’t quite grasp, makes Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship at the end of the novel feel totally unearned. I swear we get what occurred in the original over a year in the span of like a month. Although again, I’m not quite sure! The timeline in this book is very confusing because of all its tangents! But whatever the timeline is, it felt way too short for the large amount of character development Darcy and Elizabeth go through. This is not helped by the fact Darcy and Elizabeth have sex SEVERAL TIMES quite early in the book???????? Way to dash a lot of the romantic tension there. The author must have been aware of that because Darcy conveniently disappears from the story soon enough. I think I can best articulate how horrible this book was by drawing your attention to its final chapter: the final chapter of this slowburn romance, focusing on a beloved literary couple….. FOCUSES ON MARY BENNET AND NOT THE COUPLE. SPECIFICALLY MARY AND HER LOVE FOR BOWLING????????? YES, THAT IS A THING. I genuinely had nothing to say when I saw THAT was how this whole story ended, and I think it sums up the experience well: Eligible is not really about the romance between Darcy and Elizabeth or even Bingley and Jane. It sees itself as a commentary on current societal issues, especially involving women, but its commentary amounts to nothing. It offers nothing new; it doesn’t even offer any potential solutions. To Elgible, if you’re a woman, either find a man who treats you right or go bowl or something. You can’t have both. And if you’re part of another marginalized group? Uhhh I don’t know, explain that you just have a birth defect or something and that’s why society treats you badly. YEAH, DON’T THINK I’M IGNORING THAT. The treatment of the one trans character is one of the worst things I have EVER seen. The birth defect argument is a GENUINE attempt to explain transness and it just… does NOT work. Once you find out he’s trans all the characters and the book itself treat him like a freaking zoo animal. It’s disgusting. His transness is also supposed to be the equivalent of Wickham’s big scandal in the original?! Which, for a book claiming to be so progressive, is a HORRIBLE way to portray transgender people. They also included a slur for trans people because why not! Yes, there’s an actual slur in this book on top of everything else!! But even the removal of this slur or other problematic commentary would not fix this book. It is fundamentally flawed at its core. The moment you twisted these beloved characters to be unrecognizable, you failed to make a good adaptation. I believe in the conspiracy theory that this author wrote a subpar romcom and reskinned it to appeal to the Austen girlies. While this might work for some, it does NOT work for me. You can enjoy this book all you want, but I personally never want to even touch it ever again.

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jlothian's review against another edition

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lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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allthingsnerdy's review against another edition

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lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a really brilliant modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. A lot has been changed, but I think most of the changes felt like they captured the point of a scene or story arch, even if the change was significant. The only thing I missed was

the final showdown between Lizzy and Lady Catherine, and Lady Catherine being a more prominent character in general. I appreciate that Kathy de Bourgh has been changed into this strong business woman and feminist, but that made her pretty irrelevant to the plot, to the point that that whole piece could have been cut out and I don't think it would have been missed.

. A lot of the journalism stuff that Liz talks about is also fairly irrelevant to the plot, besides the fact that that's how she met Jasper. But overall, outside of these minor complaints, I thought it was great and would definitely be interested in reading it again!

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theelizart's review against another edition

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Antisemitism homophobia etc and was told it gets graphically transphobic as well.

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finesilkflower's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This is my first time giving a book zero stars! I was already leaning toward giving this book a low star rating because it does all the things I find most cringey and unappealing in a modern Pride & Prejudice retelling - like going for a "Jane Austen type" archaic and pithy narrative voice but just sounding like a pretentious college essay. Then it took an out-of-nowhere hard turn into some truly vile transphobia. The plot of P&P famously hinges on a guy who initially seemed attractive turning out to be a cad; Sittenfeld swaps the heel turn from "ruining a girl's reputation" to "being transgender." That is it. That's the reveal, the guy's big crime, that immediately causes a family emergency and makes the main characters run around trying to "save" the daughter who's dating him. This is one of the most straight-up transantagonist pieces of media I have ever encountered. And I've watched "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective."

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shayanelacey's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a reread. I don't think I liked this book the first time I read it (admittedly years ago) but lots of my friends were recommending Curtis Sittenfeld novels and I thought I might give it another go and it felt much more fun the second time around. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that during my first read, I was hyperfocused on the fact that it's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and didn't quite know how to react to the choices made in the retelling (starting with "Chip" Bingley).

On this read, it felt more like a satirical romp that I thoroughly enjoyed. Even if some of the addressing of social issues felt a touch clumsy at times and I'm not sure the social commentary always landed as sharply as intended.

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jjbug86's review against another edition

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lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

I love Jane Austen, so I'm typically game for anything Austen-adjacent. That said, this book was an enormous disappointment. Had I not been reading it as part of a book club, I definitely would not have finished it. It swung between tedious (why do I need to know the names of all the streets in Cincinnati?) and, at times, downright offensive (racist, transphobic, fat-phobic, etc). Besides their names, the characters bore little resemblance to Austen's creations. They were shallow, one-dimensional, and generally irredeemable. The author did a poor job of translating Austen's world into a modern context, and it often read like she couldn't decide which century she was writing in.

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rebeccameyrink's review against another edition

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3.0

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