Rereading Pride & Prejudice

This year, readers around the world are celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. Today we’ve got an episode of NPR’s Books We’ve Loved where Linda Holmes, Andrew Limbong and B. A. Parker discuss Austen’s seminal novel Pride & Prejudice. The trio weighs in on how the romance genre continues to reference the book’s “enemies to lovers” story – and why the tale’s leads Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy still make us and laugh and swoon even today. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Linda Holmes?

  Hey, it's Linda Holmes. This year, readers around the world are celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday. So today on Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're bringing you an episode of NPR's Book of the Day podcast. They have a new series called Books We've Loved. Our pals Andrew Limbong and B. A. Parker are making timeless books timely again by rereading old favorite books and telling us why they matter today. Recently, I joined them to talk about Pride and Prejudice. We chat about how the romance genre continues to reference the book's enemies-to-lovers story and why Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy still make us laugh and swoon even today. Here's Andrew.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Well, we're about to enter a world I'm relatively new to. To not tease this out anymore, we are talking about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's a big one.

• 0:58Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  It's a big one. This is a doozy.

• 1:01Linda Holmes?

  It looms large in many minds. I'll just put it that way.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  100%. Wait, are you a big Austen head, Lynda?

• 1:07Linda Holmes?

  I'm not a big Austen head. I have read some of the books and I have seen some of the films, but I am not the kind of Austen head that many of my acquaintances and friends are, which is to say, one of my friends has led Austen tours around parts of England. And I'm not that kind, but, you know.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I guess that friend has been booked and busy this year.

• 1:30Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, and I really, really, I really, really like this book, so.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. For the people who haven't read it, I've just got a quick synopsis here. It's about how you cannot tell Lizzie Bennet what to do, right? This book follows Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters' travails with men and marriage. The central relationship in the book is the courtship between Lizzie, who comes from a relatively poor family, and the super-rich Mr. Darcy. There's a lot of poor communication between the two, which gives the book its juice, until, spoiler alert, they end up happily ever after.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, we'll see. Yeah. I think that's fair, right? That's a fair summation. I'd never read this book before.

• 2:12Linda Holmes?

  Andrew.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I've somehow made it through my life. It was never assigned to me in high school. By the time I got to college and was serious about studying literature, I was pretty focused on American modernism, and I just had no time for anything else.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Just you and Kerouac? And you were just like, no, more.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  You know the deal. Come on.

• 2:29Linda Holmes?

  Nobody reads everything. There are just certain people who are very good at giving you the impression that they read everything. They actually don't.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, this is the big 250th anniversary of Jane Austen. I know there's a lot of stuff going on and I felt incumbent to give it a shot. I'll just like give the top line.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Quite a fun read.

• 2:48Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Not bad.

• 2:50Linda Holmes?

  It is a fun read.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I dug it. I'm into it.

• 2:51Linda Holmes?

  It is a fun read. I think that's the thing that sometimes surprises people. If they think of this as like a swoony romance book, I think when people find that it is a really funny book, they are sometimes a little bit surprised because I mean, it is a general problem throughout society that people think jokes were invented in like 1980. You know what I mean? And it is sometimes really funny when people come across like, one thing fairly early in the book that I had highlighted is this moment when Darcy is talking about the fact that he had noticed that she has like lovely eyes and he's starting to kind of be attracted to her and then talks about her eyes and then the book says, "To this discovery succeeded

• 3:32Linda Holmes?

  some others equally mortifying," which is very funny. It's the idea that like he's horrified to find how pretty she is when he had been kind of trying to keep distance from her. And those kinds of little asides, I think sometimes startle new readers to this book who expect it to be very staid and very what they think of as early 19th century British. It's a very funny book.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Oh, I found it to be hilarious, like reading this as an adult because I'd read it as like a teenager, was, oh, this isn't as romantic as I remembered it to be. It's a way more practical approach to relationships.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Wait, Parker, when did you first read it?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I read it when I was, I want to say 15 because I-

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Is it like a school thing?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  No, the first DVD I ever got was for Christmas. It was Bridget Jones's Diary.

• 4:24Linda Holmes?

  There you go.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  That my mom got me. And then, so I saw that was my connection to Bridget Jones's Diary. And then I got the book from the library of Bridget Jones's Diary. And then I got to Jane Austen. So it was a little backwards way of getting there.

• 4:39Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  What about you, Lynda? When did you first read it?

• 4:42Linda Holmes?

  You know, I don't remember exactly when I first read this book. I may have come to it via the BBC adaptation in 1995 that Colin Firth is in and Jennifer Ely is in.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Miss Bennet, please allow me to apologize for not receiving it properly just now. You were not leaving.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  We were, sir. I think we must.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  I hope you're not displeased with Pemberley.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  No, not at all.

• 5:13Linda Holmes?

  Which is a very specific kind of take on the book. And I think for people who are American adults now, I most often encounter people who, from a film adaptation perspective, favor either the BBC adaptation with Colin Firth or the 2005 film adaptation that Joe Wright directed with Keira Knightley and Matthew McFadyen, who, if you've seen Matthew McFadyen as Tom on Succession, you'll be very surprised to see him playing Darcy. It's a little different.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, like we said, this novel does loom large in culture, which we're going to take a break and then get to the sort of cultural impact of Pride and Prejudice. We'll be right back.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. Before the break, we talked about our personal connections to Pride and Prejudice, but I want to zoom out and talk about the sort of cultural influence of the book. I'll just run through some quick Jane Austen bio, just to give us some grounding here. This book, Pride and Prejudice, was first titled First Impressions. Austen completed the draft in 1797, but the book itself wasn't published until 1813. All six of her novels published during her lifetime were credited only as By a Lady, and her name didn't appear on a book until after her death. She didn't really pop off. She had a modest readership, but wasn't, you know, capital J, capital A, Jane Austen, until later in the 19th century. She sold the rights of Pride and Prejudice for £110,

• 6:49Speaker 01

  which I think amounts to about £9,000 today.

• 6:52Linda Holmes?

  Jane!

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she never got any royalties. You know, she signed one of those bad deals, like she was like a Motown act.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  And then she died relatively young. She died at 41. All of that said, my first...

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Sort of way to talk about how this book is around us culturally is Elizabeth Bennet is on the Mount Rushmore of I'm not like those other girls.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Right?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Am I wrong here?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  I think so, but it's like it's her and maybe like Jo March. I feel like in my teenage brain, they were on the same level of like, I'm a fierce, independent. I'm not like, I'm not silly like these other girls. Who are focused on marriage and money.

• 7:37Linda Holmes?

  I think that's right. I think one thing that's interesting about this book is it was published at a time when marrying for position was still expected from probably a larger proportion of people than it's expected from now. And yet, there is a yearning to marry for if not love, then affection. The interesting thing about the sort of transmogrification of Lizzie Bennet into Bridget Jones is that Lizzie is not as insecure as Bridget is. Bridget kind of takes the Lizzie Bennet idea of being outspoken and sort of not fitting in. And it's seen through a lens of being very self doubting and sort of self loathing.

• 8:19Linda Holmes?

  Whereas Lizzie is very, for much of the book, she's very like, well, this is how I see it. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm not going to do. Like it or lump it. And so in that way, I like her as a character for that reason.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. So while we're on the topic of Bridget Jones, I dug up this interview with Helen Fielding, who's the author of Bridget Jones, that she did with NPR back in 1998. Shout out to Talk of the Nation.

• 8:43Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Our colleague Lynn Neary was hosting this day. And so the topic of this segment was approaching female singledom with humor. And here is what Fielding had to say about Pride and Prejudice.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  I think, you know, Bridget has got quite a lot of links with Jane Austen. I based the plot on Pride and Prejudice. And in some ways, times are very similar to Jane Austen's day and women's preoccupations are the same in some ways. But what is different is economic power now and that a woman can make a very good life for herself on her own in every sense. And so there is a lot more to give up. And I think probably what's happening is lots of women are not prepared to compromise and not prepared to be with someone who is unkind to them or doesn't get on with them or whatever.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  And that's the reason perhaps why there are. Many more single women than there were, but they're still looking for an identity.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  I think it's an interesting reading, right? Because the implication here is that women, again, this is in 1998 that she's talking, right? Have more to give up because they have more agency. So that way, that means like people in Lizzie Bennet's has have less to give up because they lacked agency. But I don't know, when I was reading this novel, I I found that because they had no agency in other spaces of life, marriage is such a huge step.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And a huge decision to make. And it's all it to me, it seemed like they had more to give up because they had no other like outlets for decision making.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I think a part of, I would say my maturity, reading this now as an adult, is I finally side with Mrs. Bennett. I'm like, wait, Mrs. Bennett is right. Like, does she lack discretion and is easily vexed? Yes, but she understands the rules of the game that like this society has created in a way that the Bennett daughters don't fully grasp. She wants her kids to be okay because she can see essentially the writing on the wall about like, what are the family's options? This was like the first time I was like, oh, Mrs. Bennett, I get it. Like, are you embarrassing sometimes?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, you just want everyone to be okay.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  I was really frustrated with, I just watched the 2005 Keira Knightley virtual movie yesterday. I was really frustrated with the depiction of the mom with Mrs. Bennett in that film. Because in the book, I read her as like, listen, she just knows the game. Whether, you know, whether you like it or not, she just knows.

• 11:15Linda Holmes?

  She's irritating sometimes, but she understands how.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  She is genuinely genuine. It comes out of a place of like worry and care for her kids.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Right? And in the movie, she's portrayed as this like ditzy, kind of dumb and like all over the place woman. And the dad, played by Donald Sutherland, is played by as this like kind and gentle father. And I was like, that is not at all.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Your mother insists on you marrying Mr. Collins.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  Yes, I shall never see her again.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  And as you from this day onward, you must be a stranger to one of your parents.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  Who will maintain you when your father is dead?

• 11:50Speaker 05

  Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins. And I will never see you again if you do.

• 11:57Speaker 06

  Mr. Bennett.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  That version is so like whimsical and it's like it's sweeping and it allows for the idea that this is like a romance book. And so when you go back to reading it and read like it is about manners and it is about like women being practical in their decisions because there is, there are parts in the book where Elizabeth Bennet very like practically is like, maybe I should marry Mr. Darcy. Like, he is kind and maybe I jumped the gun and made a bad decision. Whereas in like a very like practical, I need to be married kind of way.

• 12:31Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  That it wouldn't be as romantic if said in the movies.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Can we talk about where this swoony reputation comes from? Is it because of these adaptations? Or is it because of up until reading this today, my only experience with the book was through the cultural osmosis, right? And so you got mail or whatever, you know, and they're talking about how like romantic it is. Is it this book's fault that we as a culture walk away with that interpretation? Or is it like the bajillion other iterations of this book, you know, things that have been inspired by this book, yada, yada, yada?

• 13:02Linda Holmes?

  I mean, it is a romantic book. Like it is a book with a love story, right? It is a book with a love story where, you know, the people meet, they don't like each other. I mean, this is sort of like the, your basic enemy.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Especially like Star Wars is too.

• 13:14Linda Holmes?

  This is your basic, this is your basic enemies to lovers. People sell a million copies of this to this day, right?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:22Linda Holmes?

  It is that. It's just that it's also a bunch of other stuff. And I think the adaptations have in some ways found it easiest, particularly when you're dealing with something shorter, like a feature film, as opposed to a six-part mini-series, have sort of found it easier to streamline in favor of the romance.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I think that, but I also just think that we as a culture are guilty of reinterpreting things to benefit our perceptions of what romance is. Like, we think Romeo and Juliet is the greatest romance of all time, but they're like 13-year-olds who kill themselves. Like, we need to like look for nuance with like Jane Austen. I do feel like, me personally, I think some of her work has been flattened in the culture.

• 14:07Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  And just like put into this box of like Regency era, like Bridgerton.

• 14:14Speaker 07

  You're the bane of my existence.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  And the object of all my desires.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  All this kind of stuff that we need it to like get that love dose real quick. Where it's like, we're all guilty of being Mrs. Bennett and being like, three of my daughters are engaged at the end of the book, success. Like that is, everyone's doing like that is-

• 14:42Speaker 01

  She won.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  She won, she won. Like, that's how we consider success on the terms of these books and how, even when I was talking to you, Andrew, about the movie earlier, I was like, did you get the American version or the British version of the 2005 film? Because in the British version, Darcy and Elizabeth don't kiss at the end. In the American version that we get, they kiss.

• 15:05Linda Holmes?

  I did not know that.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like-

• 15:07Speaker 01

  The British version, the one that's on HBO Max, ends with Donald Southern smiling happily.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Love him, RIP, but that's not what we're here for.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  So like, even now, like, I'm like, they didn't kiss at the end? Does it count? Like, it's-

• 15:23Linda Holmes?

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you can easily stand in judgment, as we've talked about, stand in judgment of Mrs. Bennett and her attitude that a romantic attachment is the goal of everyone, right? But on the other hand, any piece of traditional romantic fiction, when you talk about what the elements of a romance novel are, and the romance community, I think certainly much of it embraces this as a romance novel, not everybody. The romance novel has to end with the people getting together at the end. And I think that the key ingredient is the romance genre asks for the people to be happy. And Mrs. Bennett only asks for the people to be married.

• 16:04Linda Holmes?

  And I think that's maybe where the tension comes in between those two ways of thinking about this kind of story.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Oh, word. Yeah, all right, we're going to take a quick break, and then after that, we're going to dig into the meat of the book, get into some textual business. We'll be right back.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. Lynda, you're in the romance world, right?

• 16:27Linda Holmes?

  I am in the romance world.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  You're involved in the scene, right? No one's up. You refer to this book as a classic sort of like enemies to leverage trope. Is this like the patient zero of that?

• 16:40Linda Holmes?

  I think the vast majority of tropes like this go back much farther than that. So I would not call it the patient zero. I would definitely call it one of the most frequently referenced, probably, versions of that. Although, as I said, the interesting thing about it is this book denies you some of the pleasures of a traditional romance novel and some of the beats that would be expected to be included. But I think what you see in this book is a really funny, really clever and witty and timeless story about a couple of people who are both super stubborn. There's a great moment where Lizzie basically says to him, "Well, I think you're a lot like me. I don't think either one of us says anything

• 17:22Linda Holmes?

  unless we think it's going to impress everybody in the room." And I just thought, that is clever and self-knowing and...

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's emotional intelligence, yeah.

• 17:31Linda Holmes?

  It's a really sharp and pleasurable book, I think. And so it should not be read as work and it should not be read as, you know, necessity. It should be read as pleasure, which I think it is.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Do you know what's interesting? I keep thinking about how relevant the questions in this book are today, particularly in like non-Western cultures where these discussions of like marriage is much more like it's still a business, right? It's like, you know, my folks got married, partly not 100% out of love. There was like immigration stuff to deal with. There's like status stuff to deal with. And it's like, oh, this is like, maybe this is why I'm so forgiving to Mrs. Bennett because she reminds me of like my mom.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  You know, and it's like, okay, I completely understand where you're coming from because these are questions my aunts are still having today with their kids.

• 18:24Linda Holmes?

  Hundred percent. It's very overbroad as I think some people who are contemporary white Americans, maybe is what I mean to say. It's wildly overbroad to say, you know, now people marry for love. They used to marry for position and money. Now they marry for love. First of all, plenty of people who don't marry for position in the traditional sense are not marrying for love. Right? There are plenty of places where people are very invested still in lots of things besides your personal fondness for each other. So if anybody in this book kind of decides to set aside the need to marry for status, it's Darcy, probably, right?

• 19:08Linda Holmes?

  Because he's a very fancy person. Lizzie is a less fancy person. And there's an interesting moment in the book when Jane, her sister, asked Lizzie, like, when did you first know that you loved Mr. Darcy? And she says, I think it was when I saw his house. Like, that's a, and listen, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, like texture to that scene. She's saying a bunch of different things, I think. But it is a funny line in light of that kind of hyper romantic, don't marry a rich guy because he's a rich guy, marry for love a guy who happens to be rich. Like, that's, there's an interpretation of the story that I think is unfair if you see it in that way.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  That's like a really thoughtful interpretation that I've never really thought of. Like, is the marriage the win or does the love the win?

• 19:53Linda Holmes?

  Well, I mean, Jane and Lizzie both end up marrying men that they loved and wanted to marry and who loved and wanted to marry them, who love and treasure them. And so they win in that regard.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  They just happen to be in positions of power and stature and wealth.

• 20:11Linda Holmes?

  Right. Whereas Charlotte, Lizzie's friend, who marries Mr. Collins, has succeeded, according to Mrs. Bennet, because she is married, she is secured in her future. She has a place to live, she has a husband, she's not going to, as is mentioned at one point in this book, die an old maid. But it's clear in Austin's vision that she does not have the same kind of happy ending as Lizzie and Jane because they marry someone who's lovely to them.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Well, there is that moment in the book where the family like comes together and is like completely embarrassing, but they're they're being their true selves, though. Like, the sister wants to play the piano, the like,

• 20:57Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  The mom wants to gossip, the dad, I mean, like, they're, everyone is-

• 21:01Linda Holmes?

  The one wants to run off and have sex with a soldier.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  You know what? If you like it, I love it. But like, but it is who they are. And there's a moment where Darcy is brutally honest about his, like, he's in love with Elizabeth Bennet, but is also brutally honest about who her family is. And there's a part of me that couldn't get past that of like, he's like, it doesn't shift that much.

• 21:25Linda Holmes?

  It's a very tough moment. And I think one of the things that I find fascinating about this is that they, you know, Austin doesn't give you a lot of

• 21:38Linda Holmes?

  super demonstrative business about him and his feelings beyond this kind of outpouring to her, which turns out to be really not well done at all, because he comes in and he's like, it's a terrible idea because you're not suitable and I hate your mother and all this other stuff is, you know, you're completely unsuitable, but I love you anyway, so marry me because it's too painful for me if you don't. And she sort of has this wonderful, I think, has this wonderful reaction that's basically like, thanks? And then she just sort of says, no, thank you. You have done this in a very horrible and insulting way. Plus, she is carrying a couple of misunderstandings about things that he has done, but she sort

• 22:20Linda Holmes?

  of reacts with a revulsion, I would say, doesn't want anything to do with him. And it takes other information coming to light about these other things that she was under the impression that he had done, that perhaps he had not done, to kind of repair that. But to me, yes, to me, it would be very difficult to get over some of the things that he said about-

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Christmases would be difficult.

• 22:43Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, it would be difficult. It would be difficult. Although, is it called first? Maybe less difficult.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I'll push three.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Up next, we'll have our final verdict, some recommendations, and hear from another fan of Pride and Prejudice. Stick around.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. I think I know the answer to this, but the final question is, why do we think this book is worth reading today?

• 23:19Linda Holmes?

  I would say, one, for its influence on other elements of culture, which is always worth, uh, worth understanding. And two, for its love story, which despite how unusual it is in some of the ways that we've talked about, is still really compelling to me. And three, because it is so funny and so much fun.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  And mean, in a funny, you know?

• 23:45Linda Holmes?

  And mean, at times. At times, it is mean. She is cutting.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  I mean, Austin's feelings are strong. I think, I think it's like this becomes this kind of shorthand when we are trying to navigate some of these stories about relationships. Like, oh, this is clearly like an Elizabeth Bennet character. And I think the way that we started with Andrew being like, we read it to understand like where more contemporary works are like getting, not that they're ideas from, but like-

• 24:17Speaker 01

  It's like listening to the Beatles is what I was thinking of it, you know? It's like you gotta, gotta-

• 24:20Speaker 02

  You gotta listen to the Beatles before you can-

• 24:22Speaker 01

  You gotta listen to understand contemporary music.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Before you can get to Take McGrey? Like, I don't know.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Sure. All right.

• 24:27Linda Holmes?

  Well, I was gonna say, it's like reading the Bible in some ways, that even if you don't, even if it's not your religion, it's very influential and you're gonna hear about it a lot. So for some people, it turns out to be worth knowing what it says, even if they don't have a religious attachment to it.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:45Linda Holmes?

  So even if you do not have a spiritual attachment to Jane Austen or to romance, perhaps it's worth knowing what's going on in there.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. I think it's time for If You Like This, Read That. Parker, do you wanna go first?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Sure. Okay. So I think it was in 2019, I have a friend from Pakistan who was like, "You've gotta read this book called Unmarriageable."

• 25:09Speaker 02

  And so I read it, it's like, oh, it's basically it's Pride and Prejudice, set in contemporary Pakistan. And it doesn't retread a lot of the plot of Pride and Prejudice. Yes, but it leans itself to the cultural mores of today within Pakistan and how it relates to that Austin world. And I just think it's a really lovely, funny, like, quick read, to be honest. Unmarriageable by Sonya Kamal.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  That's right. I'd said before that by the time I was like getting serious about literature, I was like really thinking a lot about like, American stuff. And the book I was thinking a lot about was William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. In the sense of like, the weight of the family is on your shoulders. Fairly or unfairly, you can complain and whine and moan about like, the game sucks and the deck is loaded against you, but the weight of the family and the family honor is rested on your decisions. And what you do speaks to your family name. And that's a heavy burden to carry.

• 26:14Linda Holmes?

  Nice, Paul. I like it, Andrew.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:16Linda Holmes?

  I would say, if you come to this conversation as a romance reader, you already know this book, probably. But if you come to this conversation as not a romance reader, then maybe you don't. I would mention Red, White and Royal Blue, which is a romance by Casey McQuiston, which is about a prince who's a member of the British royal family and the son of the US president. And they meet and they hate each other and they are enemies, they can't stand each other. And then they start like emailing and texting and they fall in love. And it is a pretty hot book. If you miss there being sex in Pride and Prejudice, there's, this is a hot book. But it's also, it has a lot of stuff in it about the burdens of family and the, sort

• 27:00Linda Holmes?

  of the public implications of your relationship. And some of that is related to the fact that they're both guys, but some of it is really just the, what's expected of them because they're both incredibly high profile. It's just, it's also just a super charming book. Casey McQuiston is one of the current, like, super major writers in that genre. So their work is always worth paying attention to.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  All right, well, cool. Well, Linda, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.

• 27:30Linda Holmes?

  Thank you. I'm glad that you guys motivated me to reread this book because I definitely had not revisited it in a bit.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And that's the show. This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Megan Sullivan.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Engineering support by Robert Rodriguez. And our executive producer is Yolanda Sangueni.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to Books We've Loved from NPR. We'll see you next time.