Cathleen Schine, a Modern Day Jane Austen to Speak at Scarsdale Library

Author Cathleen Schine will speak at the Scarsdale Public Library on Saturday April 30th at 4 pm in an event sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Her best-selling novel, The Three Weissman’s of Westport is a local favorite in Scarsdale, set in a neighboring town and peppered with people you could know.

Dominique Browning, who reviewed the book for the NY Times, says, “Schine’s homage to Jane Austen has it all…A sparkling, crisp, clever, deft, hilarious, and deeply affecting new novel, her best yet.”

In the book, 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. Impulsive Miranda is a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister. Annie, is a library director who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister.

Schine’s witty, wonderful novel “is simply full of pleasure: the pleasure of reading, the pleasure of Austen, and the pleasure that thecharacters so rightly and humorously pursue… An absolute triumph” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Schine’s newest novel, To the Birdhouse was published in February, 2011 and she also wrote The New Yorkers and The Love Letter. She has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The New York Times Magazine.