The Three Weissmanns of Westport - by Cathleen Schine (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Best Seller
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Betty Weissmann has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by her husband's mistress, she and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. In Schine's playful and devoted homage to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the impulsive sister is Miranda, a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister. Schine's witty, wonderful novel The Three Weissmanns of Westport "is simply full of pleasure: the pleasure of reading, the pleasure of Austen, and the pleasure that the characters so rightly and humorously pursue....An absolute triumph" (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Review Quotes

"Schine's homage to Jane Austen has it all....A sparkling, crisp, clever, deft, hilarious, and deeply affecting new novel, her best yet . . . Schine is clearly a writer who loves to read as much as she loves to write. And it is great fun to play English major with her." --Dominique Browning, The New York Times Book Review

"Schine has been favored in so many ways by the muse of comedy . . . The Three Weissmanns of Westport is full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to Austen's own." --The New York Review of Books

"A success...Sharp-edged satire." --Marion Winik, The Miami Herald

"A clever, frothy novel...Schine playfully probes the lies, self-deceptions, and honorable hearts of her characters." --The New Yorker

"Schine sets the Austen machinery in perfect forward motion, and then works some lovely modern changes, keeping the pace going at a lively clip . . . Spotting the similarities and differences between the early 19th century and early 21st century stories is good sport, but the greater pleasure comes from Schine's own clever girls and their awkward attempts to find happiness." --The Boston Globe

"There is so much zest for life in this novel that you can only imagine how much fun Cathleen Schine had writing it." --Carol Memmott, USA Today

"Absolutely wonderful. You'll turn each page with anticipation, all the while wishing you could read it slowly in order to savor the deliciousness of Schine's particular sensibility....It will warm the center of your heart." --Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge

"Swap genteel nineteenth-century England for upscale contemporary Connecticut, add two sisters--one impulsive, one practical--and stir with lively doses of romance, domestic discord, sudden setbacks, and sublime surprises, and you get Cathleen Schine's homage to Jane Austen." --Elle

"No Cathleen Schine book is without wit and sharply observed moments." --The Wall Street Journal

"A geriatric stepfather falls in love with a scheming woman half his age in Schine's Sense and Sensibility-flecked and compulsively readable follow-up to The New Yorkers... It's a smart crowd pleaser with lovably flawed leads and the best tearjerker finale you're likely to read this year." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Cathleen Schine is the author of The New Yorkers and The Love Letter, among other novels. She has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review.