Pride and Preston Lin

Dudley (The Accidental Servants) puts a slow-burning but compulsively readable Asian American twist on Pride and Prejudice. Fifth-year college senior Lissie Cheng, an especially prickly take on Elizabeth Bennett who moonlights as a waitress at her aunt and uncle’s Chinese restaurant, and Preston Lin, a dashing PhD candidate who proves a worthy Mr. Darcy, get off on the wrong foot when Lissie accidentally delivers a dish containing shrimp to Preston’s table and his dining companion has an allergic reaction. Following this meet-ugly, the plot hews closely to the original, so much so, in fact, that it somewhat strains credulity that Lissie, an Austenite adapting Pride and Prejudice into a play for her senior thesis, doesn’t notice the parallels. Readers familiar with the original will worry that the Mr. Wickham story line—with the part of Wickham here played by Lissie’s sister’s middle school swim coach, Wayman Wang—is heading somewhere very dark indeed, but Dudley subverts expectations, keeping the story from getting too heavy but also lowering the emotional stakes of the climax. Still, Dudley brings crisp specificity to her characters’ culture, exploring family dynamics and generational differences; the protagonists have heaps of chemistry; and the sweet dynamic between Lissie and her sisters adds heart. Fans of diverse Austen reimaginings will want to check this out. (Mar.)