9 Summer Reads

We owe Jane Austen a debt of gratitude. Not just for lovely little girls named Emma or Elizabeth, but for inspiring novelists like Cathleen Schine, one of the few authors who have managed to honour Austen's style in our modern times. Schine has translated the premise and structure of Austen's themes of class struggle and changing social, marital and financial status in her entertaining novel, The Three Weissmann's of Westport. Miranda, a successful literary agent; Annie, a divorced librarian; and Betty, their 75-year-old mother are the three Weissmann's who relocate from Manhattan to Westport, Connecticut as they go through the stages of divorce and suddenly constrained financial circumstances. By turns funny and wrenching, it is an easy, well-written and captivating read.