Hello, friends. I’ve already mentioned this on Twitter and Facebook but my big news this week is that I received a Writers’ Works-in-Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council! I would be deeply grateful for the OAC’s support at any time, but their letter and cheque came at the end of a fortnight when I’d been side-eyeing my ungainly WIP and generally feeling that I’d lost all momentum. As Steph Burgis pointed out to me, the combination of artistic validation plus financial support is about as good as it gets. Thank you, jurors and administrators and taxpayers. I’m so thankful.

My other news is that Nick just surprised me with a copy of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible, “a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice” and I am here to report that it is NOTE-PERFECT.

Don’t let the cover put you off; to me, it feels like the designer was channelling Mrs. Bennet. However, the novel itself is a triumph. Sittenfeld transposes the Bennet family to Cincinnati in the year 2013. Jane is a yoga instructor. Chip Bingley first turns up wearing seersucker shorts. Jasper Wick is every bit as shallow and slimy as you could hope, and yet you understand (kind of) why Liz Bennet finds him attractive. And Austen’s plot maps perfectly onto reality television, queerphobia, casual racism, Silicon Valley and how Lydia Bennet would text.

I love that Sittenfeld is unafraid of tampering with Austen – especially the parts that so many find sacrosanct. Here’s her revision of the novel’s first line: “Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife.” As for Austen’s famous elisions, Sittenfeld fills them in with enthusiasm. I know I’m not the only reader outraged and frustrated that we never hear Elizabeth Bennet’s exact words as she accepts Darcy’s second proposal. (I also hate the passage from Emma in which the narrator reports Emma accepting Knightley’s proposal: “What did she say? Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does”. It’s too coy, too smug, entirely too intent on sorting Those Who Know from Those Who Don’t.) Towards the end of Eligible, Sittenfeld really goes for it, and it works beautifully for me.

So! I’m planning to spend the rest of this week working on Monsoon Season and ordering up more Curtis Sittenfeld from the library. What are you up to?