Cathleen Schine

A modern tale inspired by Sense and Sensibility finds financially strapped literary sisters Miranda and Annie moving in with divorcée Betty in a run-down Connecticut beach cottage, where they find love among the suburban aristocracy.

A Novel

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy eight years old and she was seventy-five... He said the words "Irreconcilable differences," and saw real confusion in his wife's eyes. "Irreconcilable differences?" she said. "Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce?" So begins The Three Weissmanns of Westport, a sparkling, and stinging, contemporary adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. The Weissmann sisters Miranda, an impulsive but successful literary agent, and Annie, a pragmatic library director, quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly fifty years and then exiled from their elegant New York apartment by his mistress, Betty is forced to move to a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who dutifully comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister. As the sisters mingle with the suburban aristocracy, love starts to blossom for both of them, and they find themselves struggling with the dueling demands of reason and romance.

Sarah Sammis

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine was inspired by Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Familiarity with the original seems to be a good predictor of how well liked (or not) this retelling will be.

Betty Weissmann, Joseph's second wife of 48 years, is handed divorce papers. Joseph has fallen for a much younger woman at work. Betty, deciding to play the widow instead of the divorcee, leaves her Manhattan home for Westport, Connecticut. Shortly there after for reasons explained at length, she is joined by her adult daughters, Miranda and Annie.

Much of the remainder of the book is focused on Miranda, a once successful literary agent, specializing in memoirs, finding herself and finding romance. Her romantic life is the largest divergence from Austen's version.

But for me, the problems weren't with the points of departure, but with the places where the Weissmanns' misadventures are forced into a narrative construct that only makes sense with younger characters living in a different time and place. For instance, the Weissmanns' are invited to Palm Springs for the winter but it doesn't ring true as a substitute for families going to London for "the Season."

The Three Weissmanns of Westport A Novel

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