Paula Marantz Cohen Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or, Love, Death and theSATs

Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or, Love, Death and the SATs

Paula Marantz Cohen

St. Martin's, Apr 2006, $23.95

ISBN: 0312325029

In Scarsdale, New York, thirty-four years old single high school guidance counselor Anne Ehrlich has to sell her once affluent patrician family home as they no longer have the resources to maintain it to pay off the debts her spendthrift father accumulated. The sole pragmatist she is the one stuck with completing the logistics of the sale.

Travel book writer Ben Cutler moves to Scarsdale so that his nephew Jonathan can attend a top high school in the states after they lived overseas for years together along with his single mom. Ben is stunned to learn the love of his life Annie works there. Thirteen years ago when she attended Columbia and he worked as a travel agent in Queens they fell in love. However, her snooty family rejected the working class Ben and she did not have the fortitude to defy them. Seeing him now Anne knows sadly what she truly lost and how unhappy she has been since she said no to her beloved Ben.

The second Paula Marantz Cohen's modernizing of the works of Jane Austen (see JANE AUSTEN IN BOCA based on Pride and Prejudice) is a fine tale that updates Persuasion. The story line is obvious how it will end from the moment the counselor meets Jonathan's Uncle Ben, but the audience will not care as the insight into the college admissions process is fascinating and the denial of the lead pair that they both desire a second chance make for high tension in spite of at times each seems like a loser. What holds the tale together besides the best admissions review since How I Got Into College is the support cast which seems genuine with no evil souls including his likable fianc e.

Harriet Klausner