The Three Weissmanns of Westport

I'm one of those people who reads Jane Austen as if making a yearly pilgrimmage. I'm devoted to her books, having read Pride and Prejudice something like 10 times, though I'm not nearly as obssessed as some people. I don't, for example, generally pick up books that are continuations of her books, sequels, or books in which the new author has thrown in some superfluous sea monsters or zombies. No, I'm a bit of a purist, but I'll admit I like the predictable romance. Cathleen Schine's The Three Weismanns of Westport is not a predictable romance, but it is a retelling of Sense and Sensibility, molded to fit a modern age, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Betty Weissmann and her two middle-aged daughters are exiled to a run-down cottage due to impending divorce and career implosion. Actually one daughter goes along simply to keep an eye on her sister and mother who happily float outside of reality, particularly economic reality. This is the Eleanor character while Miranda plays flighty, romantic Marianne. The matriarch has a much bigger role here than in Austen's book and she's very entertaining, for example as a lady of leisure and wealth discovering infomercials for the first time. Betty had begun watching daytime TV and found it extraordinarily informative and reassuring. There were so many problems in the world she had never though of, and so many products to solve them.

Betty pretty much pretends she's a widow when her husband of 50 years dumps her for a younger woman and she really doesn't have a head for playing poor, though she enjoys her Costco fake fire and the coziness of playing at widowhood, even while she tires of cooking for her grown daughters. Strangely, Betty is more planted in the world, more astute, than flighty Miranda. Miranda's literary Agency has imploded (in a James Frey sort of way, replete with Oprah visit), but she has no concept of money or what to do. When she finds the beach too short for mournful walks in foul weather, she buys herself a kayak in which to storm the seas, so to speak. Never mind that she's never been in a kayak before or that they have no money. How can she deny herself what she knows is so good for her soul?

Annie is the voice of reason, or tries to be, but she's often drowned out by her sister's histrionics and her mother's devotion to both her former husband and her new-found life of "deprivation." Besides, of course, Annie is suffering from her own problems and doesn't feel allowed to express them. She's the solid one, she's the one who pays the bills and expects exactitude, ever tamping down her family's excesses. It's a lonely struggle for all of them, even as they live unexpectedly cheek by jowl.

Men show up eventually, as they do in any good Austen novel. Some of them less appropriate than others, some that you think you can read a mile away (either because you know your Austen or because they're a type), but Schine twists Austen's plot to fit the modern age so that the ending isn't quite the one we expect. The characters and the hangers on are all fun, even the villains. It's especially fun if you know Sense and Sensibility because it was great trying to sort out who was who. If you can't face reading Austen, just rent the Ang Lee movie. Sure, Hugh Grant minces around in a rather strange way that I'm sure I used to find charming, but Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet make up for this, and it's all about the women anyway, isn't it?