***
NOVEL: Pride, prejudice and other flavors
AUTHOR: Developer Sonali
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2019
REVIEW:
***
Pride and Prejudice gets an Indo-American California makeover here, complete with a gender-swapped version of the classic story. It’s an easy and airy read, rather silly and predictable, but there are times (like these) when readers want the comfort of the familiar with just a little novelty to spice it up.
***
Dr. Trisha Raje is the heroine here, an accomplished neurosurgeon from a wealthy and successful family. She’s brilliant at her life’s work, has a strained relationship with many of her loved ones due to a past incident, is extremely socially awkward, and unexpectedly finds herself falling in love with the caterer her family last hired. his brother’s political campaign. This caterer, DJ Caine, is a brilliant chef, under financial pressure, with a problematic past and with a very sick sister. He despises Trisha and her arrogant and snobbish ways. You can see where this leads.
***
What I rather like about this take on the story is that the often overlooked Wickham plot is front and center here. Pride and Prejudice isn’t just a romance – it’s an examination of a society’s response to sexual predation – and it’s something as relevant today as ever. Sonali Dev does a good job updating the details to maintain that relevance, and it gives the reader some serious food for thought amidst a rather lighthearted story.
***
The characters in this novel, you’ll find, are all a bit exaggerated. They are ridiculously accomplished and extremely dramatic. You may or may not find it boring – it’s all just an unrealistic fantasy, so maybe it works. What I found a bit more problematic was Trisha’s cavalier attitude about medical ethics and patient privacy, but again, that’s not the real world and HIPAA Not Applicable.
***
If you’re looking for some solace while avoiding COVID, or if you’re lucky enough to be on a beach, this novel might be for you.
***
EVALUATION (one to five whistles, five being the best): 3 whistles
***
HOW TO BUY : Amazon
***
Laura LaVelle is a lawyer and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a century-old house, with her husband, two daughters and two cockatiels.
Laura can be contacted at [email protected]
***
Intro Image (from book cover) – HarperCollins
***
ALSO ON OUR SHELVES:
A countess under the stairs, Eva Ibbotson
A gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
A Diary of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
A man called Ove, Fredrik Backman
A patchwork planet, Anne Tyler
A room with a view, EM Forster
Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
A wandering eye: Travels with my phone, Miguel Flores-Vianna
After the fall, Dan Santat
Airs Above Ground, Mary Stewart
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An Almond for a Parrot, Wray Delaney
An English Murder, Cyril Hare
An Exaltation of Larks, James Lipton
An infamous army, Georgette Heyer
Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
Ayesha finally, Uzma Jalaluddin
Before the fall, Noah Hawley
Beauties on Their Toes, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Bellewether, Susanna Kearsley
Dark House, Charles Dickens
Blue Highways, William The Less Heat-Moon
Hello Sadness, Françoise Sagan
Books for living, Will Schwalbe
Bunker Hill, Nathan Philbrick
Burmese Days, George Orwell
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
Can’t we talk about something nicer?, Roz Chast
Songs and Chaos, Cindy Ansty
Charlotte’s Web, White EB
Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Cloudstreet, Tim Winton
Confidential Cockpit, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Death in profile, Guy Fraser-Sampson
Decorating a room of your own, Susan Harlan
Speculation Department, Jenny Offill
Diary of a provincial lady, EM Delafield
Doctor Jazz, Hayden Carruth
Ed Emberly’s Animal Drawing Book, Ed Emberly
Eleanor Oliphant is fine, Gail Honeyman
Pleasures in danger, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Everything Happens For A Reason – And Other Lies I Loved, Kate Bowler
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin
Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie
Frederique, Georgette Heyer
Excerpt from the mixed files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler, EL Königsburg
Screaming Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Ghostly, edited by Audrey Niffenegger
Ghosts of New York, Jim Lewis
Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Gmatin, Gnight! Little Pep Talks for Me & You, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Go set a keeper, Harper Lee
Good Poems, Keillor Garrison
Gowanus Waters, Steven Hirsch
Gray Mask, Patricia Wentworth
H for Haiku, Sydell Rosenberg
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, JK Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne
Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky
Hemingway didn’t say that, Garson O’Toole
This is New York, EB White
Heretics and Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Hide my eyes, Margery Allingham
Home cooking: a writer in the kitchen, Laurie Colwin
How to Cook π – An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics, Eugenia Cheng
Humans, Brandon Stanton
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
I Will Always Answer, Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda with Liz Welch
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
In the final analysis, Amanda Cross
Jane and the Inconvenience at Scargrave Manor, Stephanie Barron
Read-aloud manual by Jim Trelease, edited and revised by Cyndi Giorgis
Kenny and the Dragon, Tony Di Terlizzi
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Belly, Anthony Bourdain
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lexicon, Max Barry
Lizard Music, Daniel Pinkwater
Longbourn, Jo Baker
Loveboat, Taipei, Abigail Hing Wen
The Ghost of Magdalen, Robert Girardi
Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
Momo, Michael Ende
Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
24-hour bookstore by Mr. Penumbra, Robin Sloan
My life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never let me go, Kazuo Ishiguro
New York New York, Richard Berenholtz
Night train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
1984, George Orwell
No Time to Lose, Ursula K. Le Guin
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
New Advice, Jay Bushman
On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder
Once upon a time, AA Milne
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels and the Haunted Bookstore, Christopher Morley
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
Plato and a platypus walk into a bar, Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein
Plot: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Possession, AS Byatt
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
Thoughts on a Watermelon Pickle Gift…and Other Modern Verses, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rose Cottage, Mary Stewart
Rose GaranceStephen King
Sanditon, Jane Austen and another lady
Secrets and Lies, Selena Montgomery
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Seven short lessons in physics, Carlo Rivelli
Sing and Shine!, Nick Page
Snow, Orhan Pamuk
Solutions and other problems, Allie Brosh
Sorcery and Cecelia: Or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot, Patricia Wrede & Caroline Stevermer
Always the Promised Land, Natwar Gandhi
Moving Away from the Herd: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder
Strength in What Remains: Tracy Kidder
Super sad love story, Gary Shteyngart
Tales of the Unexpected, Roald Dahl
Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes, Lynn Sherr
The Alienist, Caleb Carr
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Ed., Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardner (with original illustrations by John Tenniel)
The Beauty of Breakup, Michele Harper
The BFG, Roald Dahl
The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Benjamin Wallace
The Book of Forgotten Authors, Christopher Fowler
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
The Cat Who Went to Heaven, Elizabeth Coatsworth
The Cuckoo’s Call, Robert Galbraith
The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes, Devoney Looser
The Izu dancer, Kawabata Yasunari
The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
The Great Divorce, CS Lewis
The Great Passage, Shion Miura
The guest list, Lucy Foley
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs
The Cooler, Minette Walters
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Longbourn Letters, Rose Servitova
The love affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Madwoman and the Roomba, Sandra Tsing Loh
The Making of Jane Austen, Devoney Looser
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Martian, Andy Weir
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories, PD James
The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein
Modern Children, Jona Frank
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother and Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Left Bank Piano Shop, Thad Carhart
The Phantom Toll, Norton Juster
The Bounty of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
Star Attraction, Emma Donoghue
The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)
The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker
The Shrinking Treehorn, Florence Parry Heide
The Snow Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The troubled life of AJ Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
The strange library, Haruki Murakami
The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Swans of Fifth Avenue, Melanie Benjamin
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
The tender bar, JR Moehringer
The Three Questions, Jon J Muth
The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
The translator, Nina Schuyler
The Truth About Unicorns, Bonnie Jones Reynolds
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The War Against Normal People, Andrew Yang
The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
Women in Black, Madeleine St John
They call me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Explainer of Things, Randall Munroe
This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Farmer, Joan Dye Gussow
Hands Off the Cat, Mary Stewart
Journey with Charley, John Steinbeck
At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham
Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
We’ve always lived in the castle, Shirley Jackson
What if?, Randall Munroe
When breath becomes air, Paul Kalanithi
Worth a thousand words, Brigit Young
We learn by living: eleven keys to a more fulfilling life, Eleanor Roosevelt
84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
— # —
