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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Whatever life I get, I have to make.", April 22, 2006
This review is from: Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATs (Hardcover)
"Jane Austen in Scarsdale," by Paula Marantz Cohen, is a breezy and humorous romantic comedy set in the affluent county of Westchester, New York. Thirty-four year old Anne Ehrlich was born into wealth, but her family is now barely solvent, thanks to the profligate spending habits of her widowed father, Elihu. Anne spends her days soothing overwrought high-schoolers and helping them get into the right college. Cohen scores in her dead-on description of the competitive and high-strung Scarsdale parents who push their children mercilessly and often unrealistically to ace their SATs, write the perfect college admissions essay, and earn a spot in a top college. It is to Anne's credit that she manages to keep her sanity working in the pressure cooker of Fenimore High.
Anne's stress level rises even more when someone from her past turns up in town. Ben Cutler was penniless when he and Anne fell in love many years ago. Because of Ben's lack of prospects and her family's disapproval, Anne abruptly broke off their relationship. Now Ben is a rich and successful travel writer who has arrived in Westchester with his sister and nephew, Jonathan. Unfortunately for Anne, Ben is engaged to a beautiful woman named Kirsten, and Anne must find a way to bury her feelings for this still very attractive man.
"Jane Austen in Scarsdale" is a fast-moving, entertaining, and savvy look at the bad choices we make and later regret. Cohen makes some telling points about the importance of staying true to ourselves, especially when we have controlling parents who want to orchestrate our lives and make crucial decisions for us. This enchanting comedy of manners is a deliciously wicked satire and a poignant love story that should have wide audience appeal among fans of contemporary light fiction.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fine update of Persuasion, April 4, 2006
This review is from: Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATs (Hardcover)
In Scarsdale, New York, thirty-four years old single high school guidance counselor Anne Ehrlich has to sell her once affluent patrician family home as they no longer have the resources to maintain it to pay off the debts her spendthrift father accumulated. The sole pragmatist she is the one stuck with completing the logistics of the sale.
Travel book writer Ben Cutler moves to Scarsdale so that his nephew Jonathan can attend a top high school in the states after they lived overseas for years together along with his single mom. Ben is stunned to learn the love of his life Annie works there. Thirteen years ago when she attended Columbia and he worked as a travel agent in Queens they fell in love. However, her snooty family rejected the working class Ben and she did not have the fortitude to defy them. Seeing him now Anne knows sadly what she truly lost and how unhappy she has been since she said no to her beloved Ben.
The second Paula Marantz Cohen's modernizing of the works of Jane Austen (see JANE AUSTEN IN BOCA based on Pride and Prejudice) is a fine tale that updates Persuasion. The story line is obvious how it will end from the moment the counselor meets Jonathan's Uncle Ben, but the audience will not care as the insight into the college admissions process is fascinating and the denial of the lead pair that they both desire a second chance make for high tension in spite of at times each seems like a loser. What holds the tale together besides the best admissions review since How I Got Into College is the support cast which seems genuine with no evil souls including his likable fiancée.
Harriet Klausner
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smart and Fun Satire, June 10, 2006
This review is from: Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATs (Hardcover)
"Jane Austen in Scarsdale" is a fun, smart, quick read that is perfect for anyone planning to go to college, send a child to college, or has been to college and is thankful he/she doesn't have to go through the college admission process again.
Outright borrowing the plot from Austen's "Persuasion," hence the title, the book centers on a 34-year-old high school guidance counselor named Anne Ehrlich. Anne comes from a formerly wealthy family that has seen better days, but they are loathe to admit it. Her social climbing father and pretentious artsy sister leave Anne alone to take care of her elderly grandmother, Winnie. A wise and wonderful woman, Winnie has been kindness itself to Anne, except when it came to Anne's first love. A travel agent assistant named Ben Cutler, Winnie decided, wasn't good enough for her granddaughter. And so a young and impressionable Anne dumped him.
Now it's thirteen years later, and Ben is back - a rich, successful travel writer with a gorgeous Danish fiancee. And a nephew who is enrolling in Anne's high school.
The love story is predictable, beat by beat. The charm of this book comes from Cohen's gentle satirization of the college admissions game in 21st century America: the student packagers, the test prep, the overanxious parents, the overwhelmed kids. It's a wild and wacky world, and Cohen's sharp pen leaves no corner unmocked.
A great summer read, perfect to help readers gear up for the fall college admissions process!
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