Cathleen Schine

Julie Naughton interviewed Cathleen Schine, author of the forthcoming The Three Weissmanns of Westport, for Publishers Weekly. The start of the dialogue:

What made you want to write your own version of Sense and Sensibility?

I'd finished reading Sense and Sensibility for the millionth time, and I wondered what the modern equivalent of that sudden shift in your life would be. We don't have primogeniture in the United States, so for modern American women a comparable situation would be divorce. I used Sense and Sensibility as a jumping-off point, but the characters did pull me in different plot directions than Austen's.

Was it intimidating to try to put your own stamp on a classic?

At the beginning I was a little too literal-minded, asking myself, “What is Romanticism now?” Things got easier when I found Betty, the mother and main character. Once she appeared, her husband came easily. Miranda and Annie, the two daughters, took a while longer.

Did the Westport of your childhood influence the story?

The town has...[read on]

Visit Cathleen Schine's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue