Austen Echoes Prejudice Me in Favor of the Delightful Enthusiasm

Thanks to my friend Beth, I am on a Jane Austen kick at the moment. So when I read her enticing review of Polly Shulman's Enthusiasm, a debut young adult novel heavily influenced by Pride and Prejudice, I was intrigued. I took the book out in time to provide me with reading material for my flight to San Diego, but I cracked the book open a couple days early, and once I'd started, I couldn't resist reading it through in its entirety. It's just as well, I suppose; had I waited until I was on the plane, I might have been too hooked to put it down when we hit turbulence - which happened a lot - and my stomach wouldn't have thanked me for that...

Enthusiasm is a thoroughly charming book narrated by Julie Lefkowitz, a high school sophomore both blessed and afflicted by the devout friendship of Ashleigh Rossi. She couldn't ask for a more affectionate or considerate friend, and yet she can't help but be a bit exasperated by Ashleigh's boundless enthusiasm for her obsession du jour. She's gone along with Ashleigh's Camelot phase, her candy-making phase, her Wet Blankets phase. But when a stake-out for tickets to a concert of the latter accidentally leads to Ashleigh's discovery of Jane Austen, Julie's favorite author, thanks to the copy of Pride and Prejudice Julie totes along for reading material, the newly dubbed "Miss Lefkowitz" isn't sure how she likes having her own passion hi-jacked by her exceptionally exuberant buddy.

Especially when Ashleigh reveals her plan to crash a ball at Forefield Academy, the exclusive prep school for young men whom Ashleigh deems most likely to exhibit qualities worthy of a 19th-century romance novel. But if she doesn't agree to the scheme, she'll be forced to endure the embarrassment of Ashleigh wearing an approximation of 200-year-old clothes to school. Her constant barrage of flowery, antiquated speech is bad enough. So it is that they find themselves standing at the entrance to the dance one night in early autumn, withering under the glare of a cranky man with a neck like a turkey, who refuses to admit them without tickets. And then... a miracle, courtesy of a Mysterious Stranger whom Julie has seen and admired around town, whom she has secretly cast in the role of Mr. Darcy opposite her own Elizabeth Bennet. Handsome, courteous Grandison Parr comes to the girls' rescue, along with his friend Ned Downing, an easy-going composer.

For a few brief hours, Julie is swept off her feet by his attentions, and she dares to dream that there is more than politeness at play in his kind words and actions. And then disaster strikes when she realizes that Ashleigh likes him too. She sees it as her duty as Ashleigh's best friend to step back and let the relationship develop, regardless of her own feelings. But it certainly is difficult, particularly when Ashleigh convinces her to try out for a play at Forefield, which results in both of them seeing the lads several times a week. How long will it be possible to keep her feelings bottled up?

Shulman is herself an Austen enthusiast, and it shows. She crafts a tale that pays obvious homage to Pride and Prejudice and, to a lesser extent, Sense and Sensibility. Beyond Ashleigh's adoption of early 19th-century speech patterns and clothing, the plot has many Austen echoes. The young women are as devoted to and different from each other as Elinor and Mariane Dashwood. Indeed, they remind me more of that pair than of the Bennet sisters whom they more often reference, though Julie, restrained as she is, is sharp-witted like Elizabeth. Parr is as dashing as Darcy but never so disagreeable; Ned, like Bingley, is pleasant, but he doesn't seem to be quite so outgoing. Other characters with Austen echoes include Chris, who's as slimy as Wickham but nowhere near as charming, and Seth, a tiresome teen who works on the literary magazine with Julie and whose pursuit is as unwelcome to her as Mr. Collins' is to Elizabeth.

And what would an Austen homage be without a healthy helping of correspondence? In this case, most of the writing is done over e-mail, but the contents are just as revealing - and confusing. While Ned's notes tend to be very short and littered with misspellings, Grandison's are elegant and fairly lengthy, and they leave Ashleigh and Julie puzzling for hours over possible meanings in each sentence. When a physical message does arrive, it doesn't come through the mailbox; instead, the girls find a sonnet tacked to the tree between their houses, and the mystery deepens, for not only is it unsigned, but they don't know which of them is the intended recipient.

Both Julie and Ashleigh are very likable, a pair of vibrant young women who value their friendship deeply, even as they are caught up in the excitement of first romance. Aside from each other, they are also friends with Samantha, an older girl who is a neighbor of Julie's dad and part of the cool group at school. She acts as a sage for Julie, giving her advice on how to handle some of the situations Ashleigh gets her into. At school, the girls are close to twins Yolanda and Yvette - though not so close that they can tell them apart most of the time. The major tip-off tends to be how much they talk; Yolanda is a chatterbox, and Yvette is more reserved. But they delight in confusing people, and identity-switching skills come in handy later when Yolanda is grounded and unable to continue rehearsing for the Forefield play.

We don't really see Ashleigh's family, but we get to know Julie's mom pretty well. She's a wonderful, affectionate woman, artsy and flighty and absolutely dedicated to giving her daughter as good a life as possible. She and Julie get along famously. Not so much Julie's dad, whom she visits regularly throughout the book in scenes that remind me a lot of Carmen's storyline in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. They care about each other, but he's pretty distant, and he has expectations for Julie that don't factor in her interests and don't show much empathy for the heartache he caused when he left her mother for another woman. The other woman, Amy, is perky and tries to be nice to Julie, at least on the surface, but she's too self-involved to really embrace her step-daughter - and Julie's grudge runs too deep for her to accept such an embrace.

Julie does have a bitter streak that surfaces time and again throughout the novel, but her better nature overpowers it, especially when her jealousy involves Ashleigh, who is oblivious to Julie's interest in Grandison. As a big fan of both Jane and Bingley, I was rather put out by Julie's dismissal of both characters, but I suppose it is understandable when the girl who has always considered herself Elizabeth is assigned to the role of Jane by her best friend. Ashleigh doesn't have as much darkness churning around inside as Julie. On the other hand, she does tend to get so carried away with her flights of fancy that she inadvertently hurts those she cares about, particularly Julie. The flaws of both girls only make them more interesting and easy to relate to, while their admirable qualities make it easy to root for them.

Enthusiasm is a wholesome, breezy read that shows good old-fashioned romance can still survive in a modern, cynical world. As an ode to friendship and an homage to Austen, who seems to have great box-office draw these days, I think it would make a great movie, for the same sort of audience for which Sisterhood was intended. It certainly is a marvelous book.