Title: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet
Author(s): Bernie Su and Kate Rorick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: July 2014
Having tuned into the web series, I was looking forward to lead writer Bernie Su’s novelisation of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and it isn’t disappointing. The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet extends the YouTube videos and features Lizzie as a Communications student and video blogger from California, living at home with her parents and two sisters – Jane, a poorly paid fashion assistant – and Lydia, who skips college studies for parties, drinking and shopping. Though Jane has a paid job and Lizzie tutors when she isn’t studying, all three sisters are too poor to move away from home and live independently. So Lizzie’s diary charts the behind-the-scenes progress of her thesis project (the YouTube series, chronicling her life in five minute episodes), life at home and of course her evolving friendships with best friend Charlotte Lu (a fellow Mass Communications student), rich new neighbours Bing and Caroline Lee, and their richer, arrogant friend, William Darcy. (In this story, Bing is a trainee medical student, Caroline is a socialite and Darcy is a young CEO from an illustrious family.)
As a modern YA version of Pride and Prejudice, set in the United States, the retelling works and the tone of the diary is sustained well, confessional and bantering and informal. Lizzie chats about her thesis, her occasional qualms about the videos, tutoring on Tolstoy, fun asides that never make it onto the camera – and we are able to see more of a buildup to her eventual showdown with Darcy and how things come to a head. Bernie Su and Kate Rorick keep the story light and fun, and don’t let the story become solely about the romance; cash-strapped Lizzie, Jane, Lydia and Charlotte all face the same troubles as their nineteenth century counterparts, needing to find careers (as opposed to marriages) that will pay enough to get them out of home and achieve economic independence. Opportunities are thin on the ground, however, resulting in Jane holding onto a career that pays meagre money, Lydia skipping classes and refusing to think beyond her next shopping trip, whilst Lizzie balances the need to find a job with the desire to finish her education.
For instance [cue spoilers], Lizzie sees the ruin of her ambitions when a modern Mr Collins “proposes” she become his start-up business partner. Lizzie is quick to turn him down, preferring to finish studies, but Charlotte pounces on the opportunity and quits her degree, becoming the first of the friends to leave home and get her own apartment. Something that a modern readership might judge Jane Austen’s impoverished Charlotte Lucas for – marrying a man she did not love in Pride and Prejudice – is updated suitably enough for us to understand the motives of a modern Charlotte Lu. The romance of the original is, of course, still there – and characters are updated faithfully – but The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet is never only about the end result of relations between Lizzie and Darcy, or Bing and Jane, though these romances are poignant and touching. The point of this retelling is not so much about finding romance as growing secure in your own skin, and Lydia’s parallel journey of maturation and reconciliation with Lizzie also makes for good reading.
For instance [cue spoilers], Lizzie sees the ruin of her ambitions when a modern Mr Collins “proposes” she become his start-up business partner. Lizzie is quick to turn him down, preferring to finish studies, but Charlotte pounces on the opportunity and quits her degree, becoming the first of the friends to leave home and get her own apartment. Something that a modern readership might judge Jane Austen’s impoverished Charlotte Lucas for – marrying a man she did not love in Pride and Prejudice – is updated suitably enough for us to understand the motives of a modern Charlotte Lu. The romance of the original is, of course, still there – and characters are updated faithfully – but The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet is never only about the end result of relations between Lizzie and Darcy, or Bing and Jane, though these romances are poignant and touching. The point of this retelling is not so much about finding romance as growing secure in your own skin, and Lydia’s parallel journey of maturation and reconciliation with Lizzie also makes for good reading.
To sum up, I found The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet an easy, entertaining read (it took me a day to finish) and a book I would likely have enjoyed, anyway, but I liked it the more for having watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and more still for having loved and re-read Jane Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice so often since I was twelve. I am fairly positive that this retelling from Bernie Su and Kate Rorick can be enjoyed in its own right as a teen read, and perhaps as a suitable introduction to Jane Austen, though it should perhaps come with a warning label, too – if you do read this book, it will doubtless lure you quickly into the YouTube rabbit hole that is Lizzie Bennet’s video channel and social media world.
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