This is a sparkling, and stinging, contemporary adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Two sisters, Miranda, an impulsive but successful literary agent, and Annie, a pragmatic library director, quite unexpectedly find themselves in middle age leaving New York for Connecticut to be the dutiful daughters to their recently divorced elderly mother. 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.
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. 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 her daughters.
Cathleen Schine is the author of the internationally best-selling novels The Love Letter (1995), which was made into a movie starring Kate Capshaw, and Rameau’sNiece (1993), which was also made into a movie (The Misadventures of Margaret), starring Parker Posey. Schine’s other novels are Alice in Bed (1983), To the Bird House (1990), The Evolution of Jane (1999), She is Me (2003), The New Yorkers (2006) and, most recently, The Three Weissmanns of Westport (2010). In addition to novels she has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications.
