My partner bought me a copy of Ibi Zaboi’s Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix for my birthday earlier this year, and she’s been waiting anxiously for me to read it and let her know what I thought. In a moment of rather unfortunate tijming, I spent my birthday in a hospital this year, sitting at my father’s bedside while it became apparent that he wasn’t getting any better.
He was gone twenty-four hours later, and I’d barely looked at any fiction in the months that followed. Anything I picked up was generally for the thesis, and the idea of reading for fun disappeared as dad’s death was followed by pet’s getting sick, my sister being ill, and other things that kicked the idea of “normal” into something unrecognisable.
Over the weekend, all that shifted a little. My partner started reading one of the books I’d given her, breaking her own reading drought after a tough couple of months, and we settled onto the couch for an evening of devouring the written word. I quickly breezed through the last chapters of the research book I was working through, and figured it was time to give Zaboi’s book a go.
It proved to be an exceptionally good choice, both as a gift and a book to pick up when you’re looking to get back into reading. I mean, I was in love from the very first line:
You probably have a firm idea whether this book is for you after reading that, and you’re almost certainly going to be correct. If you’re up for a nuanced, Brooklyn-centred retelling of Pride and Prejudice that’s filtered through the experience of black and immigrant communities and issues of gentrification, then you should head out and pick up a copy. Zaboi is going to deliver on the promise of that opening line, and the book is an enormous amount of fun.
Pride is exactly the book I needed to get me into reading for joy again. It remixes some of the questions of class and privilege that are inherent in Austen’s work in intriguing ways, and finds enough ways to be it’s own thing without betraying the central premise.
Recommended.
PRIDE: A PRIDE & PREJUDICE REMIX: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO | BOOKTOPIA
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