Soniah KamalRecensioni

4.5 stars! I really enjoyed this take on the classic story set in Pakistan. I’m not very knowledgeable about daily life there so I felt like I was enjoying a cultural travelogue along with the story!

4.5 stars! Charming and fun! A great retelling that is both social satire and romance as was the original and is more generous with many of the characters including Sherry-Charlotte, Annie-Anne de Bourgh, Qitty-Kittie. And made me hungry for Pakistani food!

One meta-issue was that at some point I wondered when Alys would realize she is living the very story she knows so well. It seems unlikely that it wouldn’t occur to her at some point given the names of the people in her life so closely paralleling those of Austen’s P&P. It still worked though!

3.5

Delightful retelling of a familiar story: Pride & Prejudice. Enjoyed the dynamics of a big bunch of sisters and did a lot of googling of Pakistani fashion terms while reading.

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A very enjoyable retelling of P&P (excellent on audio). The story sticks very close to the original plot so if you're looking for new plot twists you'll be disappointed. Great to read a book set in Pakistan that's fun and light.

I enjoyed this book, but only because I read the real pride and prejudice before this. When adapting the novel the author took out some of the character motivations which made it feel like the things that happened in the novel only happened because that's what happened in pride and prejudice. There was also too much exposition and a lack of character/ relationship development (for example the Elizabeth jane relationship was missing a lot of characterization and if I hadn't read the original I would not have understood this part of the book).

I felt that the biggest problem was the dialogue which just felt unrealistic throughout. I mean it was decent but it kinda felt like a 15-year-old wrote It or like it was robots talking to each other. for example there are multiple times when darsee and alys just go on listing what they have in common. to me, this feels so awkward. the alys/darsee interactions are by far the worst. If you're looking for a love story with good dialogue between the love interests, don't read this book.

There were also some things that the author added that didn't make any sense. For example when alys confronts darsee at the party. this doesn't make any sense because it didn't impact the plot at all except by making it make less sense. Why would darsee still propose to alys after he already knew that she was convinced he was guilty of cheating wikaam out of his inheritance? Like what? it just undercuts the plot and makes us think that alys is a bitch.

I did really like the additional characterization of mrs. binat, the sisters, annie and all the women. This was what made it readable. I also like how alys and jena were English teachers which added a lot of depth to their characters BUT this was slightly undercut by the fact that alys literally says a bunch of times that she does not want to get married, but then, in the end, she's like "ohhh darseeee omg i love you" and then just marries him without it even being a conflict. like WHAAAAT? you had a chance to make good additional conflict but then you just ignore it. aaaaaaaaa.

anyway, overall I would say if you've ready pride and prejudice that this is a pretty decent read. But if you haven't then I would not recommend it.

it's not the worst but it's definitely not the best.

shit, I wrote way more than I intended to.

I enjoyed this book, but only because I read the real pride and prejudice before this. When adapting the novel the author took out some of the character motivations which made it feel like the things that happened in the novel only happened because that's what happened in pride and prejudice. There was also too much exposition and a lack of character/ relationship development (for example the Elizabeth jane relationship was missing a lot of characterization and if I hadn't read the original I would not have understood this part of the book).

I felt that the biggest problem was the dialogue which just felt unrealistic throughout. I mean it was decent but it kinda felt like a 15-year-old wrote It or like it was robots talking to each other. for example there are multiple times when darsee and alys just go on listing what they have in common. to me, this feels so awkward. the alys/darsee interactions are by far the worst. If you're looking for a love story with good dialogue between the love interests, don't read this book.

There were also some things that the author added that didn't make any sense. For example when alys confronts darsee at the party. this doesn't make any sense because it didn't impact the plot at all except by making it make less sense. Why would darsee still propose to alys after he already knew that she was convinced he was guilty of cheating wikaam out of his inheritance? Like what? it just undercuts the plot and makes us think that alys is a bitch.

I did really like the additional characterization of mrs. binat, the sisters, annie and all the women. This was what made it readable. I also like how alys and jena were English teachers which added a lot of depth to their characters BUT this was slightly undercut by the fact that alys literally says a bunch of times that she does not want to get married, but then, in the end, she's like "ohhh darseeee omg i love you" and then just marries him without it even being a conflict. like WHAAAAT? you had a chance to make good additional conflict but then you just ignore it. aaaaaaaaa.

anyway, overall I would say if you've ready pride and prejudice that this is a pretty decent read. But if you haven't then I would not recommend it.

it's not the worst but it's definitely not the best.

shit, I wrote way more than I intended to.

This is a fun and thought-provoking retelling of Pride and Prejudice in a Pakistani setting.

The best of the modern P&P adaptations I've read. Setting it in modern Pakistan gives it an authentic parallel with Austen's England and the tweaks to make it modern don't feel forced in any way. The family relationships are so strong and I particularly like how the mother is drawn (it's a very sympathetic look). Just great characterizations all around and Austen's plot just sings in this context.

I want to give an almost 4*, not for the writing, but for the escape.
A fun and light retelling of a classic.
I especially enjoyed the social commentary on gender and patriarchal society that is still present in our Desi cultures today.

AHHHHHHHHH THIS BOOK!!!!


Here Elizabeth Bennet is Alysba "Alys" Binat who is a teacher at the British School Group. She's single but doesn't want to get marry & her idealistic views almost end up getting her into trouble.



Fitzwilliam Darcy is Valentine Darsee here. He's not into the show-sha of the elites and hates greedy people which gives him a perpetual brooding look.



Then there's Jane aka Jenazba "Jena" Binat the lovely elder sister. Like Alys she's also a teacher and tends to see the good in everyone.



Courting her is Charles Bingley aka Fahad "Bungles" Bingla who is friends with Darsee & doesn't care about class. He is a bit weak willed when it comes to his sisters tho.



Unbeknownst to them is the good-looking but shady Jeorjullah Wickaam who seems to have his own agenda.



Then of course there's other familar characters like Mr and Mrs Binat, the Binat sisters Lady, Mari and Qitty, the Bingla sisters Hammy and Sammy, Darsee's aunt Mrs Beena de Bagh and others. Will they help these crazy kids get together or try to make a complete mess of things?



I've said in some other reviews that there's a lack of South Asian romance in literature but I feel that might lessen with this book.

So for starters, this book follows the original P&P very closely, to the point where some of the dialogues are word to word the same. It might be a bother to some people but it didn't detract the book for me really. There's also a lot of Urdu words but the author translates them right away so it won't be a problem for non-Urdu speakers.

I loved the setting and the environment. It really made you feel as if you were travelling through Pakistan. Sucks tho that Dilipabad doesn't really exist although there's probably places similar to it.

The name changes were good e.g Bennett into Binat (which literally means girls/daughters in Arabic lol), Darcy into Darsee (a variation of Darzee meaning Tailor). Some names tho were too on the nose like Mari, Qitty, Jujeena while some were really reaching like Jeorjullah, Jenkinudin etc.

The book also deals with the issues Pakistani kids face when they come back to their home country after living abroad. It's rarely ever addressed in other books and I'm glad it was done here.

There was also a lot of name dropping of popular books and films, some which were familiar but now make me want to go and look for them lol.

Overall great read, I loved it, highly recommend.

I really wanted to like this book. The last maybe 20% of it pulled it up from a 1-star to a 2-star rating for me, because it got more interesting when they finally moved past all the long drawn out back stories and interacted with people (outside of the Binat girls' constant infighting). It just felt like so much backstory and world-building, but very little actual character interactions and meaningful character development. The development that occurred was mostly just sprung on us, vs. something the characters worked through. Sigh. Really fun idea for a P&P adaptation, but mostly it felt like a slog.

This is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan in the early 2000s. Pakistan is, in many ways, an excellent setting for a modernized Pride and Prejudice. In most modernizations, Mrs. Bennet's (in this version, Mrs. Binat's) obsession with marriage comes across as horribly out of touch, and modernizers generally have a hard time figuring out what to do with Lydia's storyline which, without giving away spoilers[1], is hard to modernize without changing it completely. Thus, the setting is the strength of this adaptation because many of the details that are hard to modernize when set in, for example, the US come across as authentic.

Whenever I read an adaptation of P&P, I consider it successful if it teaches me something new about the original. In this case, what I learned is that Mrs. Binat/Bennet is, within her narrow sphere of experience and terrible tactical choices, right: marriage really is the best option for her daughters. Avoiding marriage may seem fine in the short run, but in a society that doesn't allow women real independence, marriage, for good or for ill, was probably the most practical option for most women. As much as we may regret it from a modern standpoint, a P&P that didn't end with Alys/Elizabeth getting married would likely be an unhappy ending for her in the end. And when we see that conclusion in a modern setting, we realize how tragic it is when women have no real choice but marriage. It's easier to overlook that when the setting is in the distant past.

Overall though, I still gave the book three stars because it was a good but straightforward modernization of P&P. For folks who haven't experienced too many adaptations, that's probably fine. It will probably read as fairly fresh. Thus, I blame myself more than the book for my overall, "that was good, but not spectacular" reaction.

One thing that did bug me is that Alys is an English teacher who is very familiar with P&P -- the novel opens with her teaching it -- and she never realizes that her story is Elizabeth Bennet's story, down to the details of her sisters and their fates. Acknowledging this too early would have broken the suspension of disbelief, but there was one point at the very end where she could have noticed the parallels without breaking the story. It's a silly thing to be annoyed over, but it does bug me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[1] Can you spoil P&P at this point?

This modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in Pakistan at the turn of the millennium, has been on my Amazon wishlist for months and even when the price kept dropping, I wasn't in the mood to download and read the story - until now! P+P isn't my favourite Austen novel - that honour goes to Emma - but I love adaptations and Indian/Pakistan society certainly fits the old-fashioned motifs of Austen's work, so even though the story could have been shorter and the writing more concise, I did enjoy Soniah Kamal's take on what I consider to be Austen's 'primer' novel in the end.

We all know what happens in Pride and Prejudice, and Unmarriageable is a kissing cousin to the original, so I'll just say that I loved the Lizzie character Alys Binat, perhaps more than Miss Bennet herself! I'm sort of sad that she had to marry Valentine Darsee at all, after protesting rather too convincingly how she prefers the single life (‘I’ll never be lonely’ – Alys gave a satisfied sigh – ‘because I’ll always have books.’) Her younger sisters call her 'aunty', a less than affectionate name for older, interfering women, because she is always lecturing them about education (she's a teacher in an English language school), independence and not getting married out of duty. Like Mrs Bennet, all Alys' mother wants is to marry off her daughters, to anyone who will take them. Her advice on how to 'grab it' is hilarious:

‘Jena, Alys,’ Mrs Binat said, ‘shame on both of you if this wedding ends and you remain unmarried. Cast your nets wide, reel it in, grab it, grab it. But do not come across as too fast or forward, for a girl with a loose reputation is one step away from being damaged goods and ending up a spinster. Keep your distance without keeping your distance. Let him caress you without coming anywhere near you. Coo sweet somethings into his ears without opening your mouth. Before he even realises there is a trap, he will have proposed. Do you understand?’

The plot follows Austen's novel almost to the letter, apart from a very soap opera twist to the Darcy/Wickham backstory, and Alys is always referring to Austen's work herself, being an English teacher. And she gets bonus points for confessing that ‘Darcy is overrated,’ Alys said. ‘Mr Knightley from Emma won my heart when he defended Miss Bates from Emma’s mockery.’ That said, for all her knowing observations about her favourite author - ‘I’m the omniscient narrator and observer in Austen’s novels' - Alys never recognises that she is living Pride and Prejudice, which is jarring. She even talks about Darcy and Darsee at one point, and I was thinking, 'Come on, now would be the perfect time for an out of body experience', but no.

I also liked how the author built on the double standards in Pakistani culture to make the relationships in Austen's novel work in a modern setting - how women are judged on their 'purity' and pressured to marry and have children - and her commentary on postcolonial literature (I've added Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain to my wishlist!) Perhaps a bit wordy in places, but very thought-provoking.

Superb! This is hands down the best retelling of P & P I've read. Kamal captures everything readers love about Austen in this modern retelling.

Superb! This is hands down the best retelling of P & P I've read. Kamal captures everything readers love about Austen in this modern retelling.

I have always enjoyed reading Jane Austen retellings and reimaginings because it's fascinating to see how her thoughts and ideas translate into our modern world or how modern authors can interpret them. I have liked a few and been disappointed by others, so I knew not to have a lot of expectations from this one. But Pride and Prejudice set in 21st century Pakistan held too much appeal and I couldn't stop myself from requesting the ARC. And I am so glad to report that this book exceeded all my expectations in a delightful way.

There is not much I can say about the individual characters because the author stays pretty close to the original - in terms of both the plot and the characterization. However, making both Jena and Alys unmarried women in their 30s who take up the teaching profession to help their family make ends meet, and then thrive in their independence was a deft touch. The Binat family has also extensively traveled abroad and their kids educated in international schools before the downturn in their fortunes, hence it's quite easy to believe Alys as a modern well read woman who loves her country and culture, while also being very critical of a hypocritical society that puts undue pressure on young women to be virtuous and marry and serve their husbands but the men are never expected to respect or value their partners.

The whole book is full of social commentary about the class and societal prejudice that felt all too real. I've seen enough of the snobbery and gossip mongering and the too much importance given to people with money, both in the Indian media and in my real life; and even the belief that a woman's life is only fulfilled by getting married and bearing children and not by being a person of intellect and with a voice of her own - all of this hit too close to home and that's what makes this book so special. There were some great conversations in the book which resonated with me - about finding home and identity when you've grown up with foot in your culture and traditions and the other foot trying to adapt to more western sensibilities; about how we as a country can better celebrate our history while also putting the lasting effects of colonization into context; about trying to voice an opposing opinion regarding the place of women in a society that tries to cast them into a mould.

The other strength of this book and one that I truly enjoyed was the very "desi" feel of it. I'm not a Muslim nor Pakistani, so I won't comment on how true that rep is but it did feel quite similar to some of the Pakistani TV dramas I've watched. But the culture, food and language are still very much similar to my own and it was such a delight to read about all of that in such glorious detail. All the wedding ceremonies and clothes that were described made me want to run to India and buy some nice extravagant clothes 🤩🤩 The narration about all the food in detail throughout the book is mouth watering and reading about everyone enjoying these delicacies made me want to join in all the fun. And I really adored the generous use of Urdu all through the book - it's nice to see some familiar words in conversations and especially the use of famous proverbs. The book also lots of nods to Austen's works, right from the first line to the last and some other prominent authors, so be ready for some nice recommendations.

Despite how much I enjoyed reading this one, it's not perfect. I really loved the few subplots that the author incorporated, but for the most part it's too close to the original. The romance between Alys and Darsee also felt very rushed and I would have liked to see them interact more and fall in love slowly. However, the society and world of P&P does translate well into the modern Pakistani setting and the characters felt very believable. The story is also very funny and entertaining and I couldn't put it down.

If you love Jane Austen and like reimagining her stories, then do give this one a try. And if you are from the subcontinent, then I definitely recommend this book. You will really really enjoy this desi Pride and Prejudice.

diverse fiction (pride and prejudice in modern pakistan w/POC, Muslim characters).
I don't much care for P&P, but found this to be pretty readable (I read to page 20 but stopped for lack of time). I have heard good things/good press about this title and would probably recommend.

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

74/2021. I read Unmarriageable, by Soniah Kamal, which is a novel retelling Pride and Prejudice but set in contemporary Pakistan. Most attempted Pride and Prejudice retellings are pale imitations because they substitute Jane Austen's comedy of manners about life in society, that happens to have a central romance plot (or three), for a "romance" novel which is about one romantic relationship. Unmarriageable however is faithful to Austen's range as a comedy of manners about life in society, that happens to have a central romance plot (or three). It thoroughly retells the complex of characters, plots, and subplots, from the original but wholly translated to contemporary Pakistan. I especially enjoyed how true the characters are to Austen's portrayals, with the minor exception of Annie dey Bagh (Anne de Bourgh) who I'm glad to say was allowed a few lines of her own in this new work.

Unmarriageable also adds English and Pakistani and Indian literary intertextuality beyond the framework of Pride and Prejudice. My favourite is a fleeting moment when the protagonist Alys accidentally meets Darsee while he's escorting tourists named Thomas Fowle, Harris Bigg-Wither, and Soniah (no last name) who is Harris Bigg-Wither's girlfriend. Although a reader wouldn't need to be interested in this meta layer to enjoy the main family saga.

By the end of the first short chapter Kamal had reused the famous opening line from Pride and Prejudice, rewritten it in the context of Pakistani society, and subverted that rewriting, made an actually amusing Miss Havisham reference, made a truly funny Romeo and Juliet reference, introduced her protagonist and milieu, and made me laugh several times (although more of the book's humour is amusing social satire than laugh aloud comedy).

4.5*

Quotes (too many choices!)

Lol: "She gazed at the bulletin boards plastering the walls and boasting photos where Naheed beamed with Dilipabad's VIPs. They were thumbtacked in place to allow easy removal if a VIP fell from financial grace or got involved in a particularly egregious scandal."

Cemetery: "A row of ashoka trees, vibrant and healthy, created a man-planted border, their roots feeding from blood and bones on both sides, and Alys slipped through the trunks and into, it seemed, another cemetery. Dirt paths wound through overgrown vegetation and eroded marble headstones with British names in faded lettering. She walked on, scared now that she was so deep inside the graveyard. Moonlight spread down her back like ice. All was quiet except for crickets and her footsteps, crunching twigs. She saw a form leaning against a wall, an unnatural fiery glow emanating from where a mouth should be.
Alys screamed. The form screamed.
A girl stepped out of the shadows, a lit cigarette dangling from bony fingers, a scrawny braid curling down one shoulder to her waist. She was wearing red sandals and a purple-and-green shalwar kurta topped with a red cardigan with white plastic buttons."

The only major fault was the fake history in the notes at the back: "Lord Macaulay's Address to the British Parliament on 2nd February 1835" is a well-known fake that's been around since at least 2002 (sometimes supposedly about India and sometimes supposedly about Africa). Parliament was closed and Macaulay was in India where what he actually said was this: https://perma.cc/F3G9-TXB8 (which you don't need to read). To quote Abraham Lincoln, "Don’t believe everything you read on the internet."½

An engaging and fresh adaptation of Janw Austen's classic. It reimagines the story in exciting ways while keeping the excitement alive. I recommend this book!

I will say this right up front -I have never read Pride and Prejudice---I know, I know, bad Dianne! But that means that I had nothing to compare this book to. Because of that, I feel like I read it with fresh eyes and no expectations. So I had nothing to complain about, at least literarily!

I loved this book -I could see what was going on as far as P&P since I have at least heard about it but again-no expectations. Just a fun romance set in Pakistan; where the modern life of women is very much like the lives of women in the early 1800's.

This was a fun read with plenty of good old modern back-stabbing, scandal, love gone bad, unrequited love, and pure bitchiness!

Each sister unique in her own way -some good some horrid but most make out well in the end,

I would love to read another book based on the last two sisters that didn't get married and Lady who I bet won't stay married!

Great read and although it may not be perfect as far as some aspects go (I have read the negative reviews) I am glad I used my precious book reading time on this one!½

Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan... I've long felt that the only way to pull off a beat-for-beat Pride & Prejudice update is to set it in a place where marrying above your station can make a meaningful difference in a woman's life. Setting it in Pakistan in the year 2000 is *chef's kiss*. You get the mother-obsessed-with-marriage without it being weird and out of place. Billionaire boyfriend books aside, the relationship between Alysba and Darsee reads like a real Pride & Prejudice set in "modern" times. Loved how the story was updated and all the references to books scattered throughout (I already ordered a copy of Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hossain).

One random aside, there are some jarring head-hopping scenes where the narrative shifts from the speaker to an omniscient narrator that tells you a different character's thoughts or backstory. I'm not sure if this is a call-back to Austen, or a writerly conceit, but it threw me out of the story a few times.

Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable is an warm story about sisterhood and friendship, as well as a love letter to Pride and Prejudice. The five Binat sisters live in Dilipabad, a small Pakistani town just across the Indian border from Amritsar (the setting of the Bollywood spinoff Bride and Prejudice. Is that not how everyone learns geography?). A family estrangement has left their branch struggling, unable to live as they used to, so the older girls teach English, while Mrs. Binat schemes about beautification to catch wealthy husbands. Teenage Lady flirts with everyone, Mari is a pedantic Quran reader, and youngest sister Qitty is chubby and forgotten. This has everything we love in P&P, with a distinctly Pakistani style.

Jena and Alys are both over 30, a successful updating of the Bennet sisters’ impoverished gentry background, especially since handsome Bungles is only 25. This is exactly what Bingley sisters and gossipy aunties will turn into a massive mismatch and social disaster, when it’s really a tiny obstacle for a loving marriage. The Binat sisters are English teachers at the local girls’ school, which is respectable if not impressive employment, even if Alys keeps getting scolded for running her mouth in class and leading her students to question their roles as wives-to-be.

Alys and her friends have discussions about literature in translation and colonialism. (So yes, I immediately requested all the books that Alys buys in Lahore from my library. Naturally.) There are also some comments on the joys of rereading Pride and Prejudice, which make this feel like a real love letter to Jane Austen, and Unmarriageable characters discuss their favorite Austen characters and Jane’s view of marriage. I particularly enjoyed when Annie, a chronically ill former model with a secret Nigerian boyfriend, talks about how mild and silent Anne de Burgh is. But, if you’ve read P&P, though, how do you trust a Jeorgeullah Wickaam? Alys, don’t be distracted by a handsome face!

The question of marriage and finances is a central part of Austen’s work, but I’m not sure how well the impoverished-family works as a plot device or character background right now. Current American morality sees poverty as a temporary setback to be overcome with hard work, and also considers laziness is an unforgivable personality failing. So, a poor young woman is no longer an unfortunate victim of circumstance, but a lazy taker. BOOTSTRAPS, BENNETS! Ugh. I kind of hate everything right now, and I double hate that our miserable news cycle leaks into my fiction reading.

Sherry Looclus, Alys’ coworker and friend, is even older and even more worried about money than the Binat girls. (OH! And Sir Lucas becomes Haji Looclus, a clever reimagining which took me a while to get. I just figured Haji was his first name, I didn’t realize he’d claimed the title of a Muslim who’s completed the Mecca pilgrimage.) Although it’s easy to see Mr. Collins as a ridiculous figure, we can also see how happy Sherry is to get out of her parents’ house (to fly the pigeon coop, maybe?), to mother her lovely step-children, and to have enough money that she can quit the girls’ school and work on her own projects. Of course she doesn’t have a love match, and Kaleen is still no Darsee, but you can see a partnership here.

Unmarriageable was such a great story that I forced myself to slow down reading it. I loved the revisions of familiar characters in a new setting. This novel is full of Pakistani flavor, but it’s still quite accessible to anyone with a gossipy auntie or a handsome crush.

Initially put off by the prose style, I was on the verge abandoning this when something clicked -- and I ended up enjoying this a lot. It successfully brings something new to a very familiar story.

For most of the novel, it is quite believable that Alys Binat, who has spent a decade teaching English literature and knows Austen’s novels well, doesn’t recognise all the Pride and Prejudice parallels suddenly popping up in her own life. There are enough differences in the names, personalities and circumstances of her family and friends. Moreover, women in turn of the century Pakistan have opportunities for careers and independence that Austen’s heroines lacked, which informs Alys’s advice to her younger sisters as well as her own dreams for the future.

The closest Alys comes to thinking of any of them as Austen characters is a moment when, watching her sister’s unfolding romance, Alys is reminded of similarity with Sense and Sensibility. When her best friend asks her which character she’d be in a book, she confidently says: “I’m the omniscient narrator and observer in Austen’s novels.”

However: Darsee and Wickaam? Really? And no one comments on the similarities of their names?

There was potential for Unmarriageable to expand upon the romance between Alys and Darsee a bit more, rather than echoing the final beats of Pride and Prejudice quite so closely -- but that’s a minor quibble. On the whole, I was impressed.

“Elizabeth Bennet,” Alys said, “had to marry Fitzwilliam Darcy, and he her, because Jane Austen, their creator-god, orchestrated it so. And there would be no Charlotte Lucas today because marrying for financial security is no longer the only choice she’d have. Thankfully we don’t live in a novel, and in real life if I met someone as stuck-up as Mr Darcy, I’d tell him to pack his bags, because there would be nothing that could endear me to such a snob, least of all the size of his estate. My views would frighten away a man like Mr Darcy, who ultimately wants a feisty wife but also one who knows her own place --”½

A wonderful current day version of Prise and Predjudice. This one taking place in Pakistan. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book to get the true feel of the story. Beautiful accents and fun descriptions of the ball and wedding. Discrimination and class issues run rampant. Sadly, even today we continue to suffer situations that took place centuries ago.