Rating: 
Summary: Fun book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I am an avid Jane Austen fan and Pride and Prejudice is my favorite, so I knew this book was going to be for me. The only reason I gave it four instead of five is a scene at the end of the book that I felt was forced, I guess to make it even more like Jane Austen's classic, however, I felt the writer did better when she was a little more quiet about it. However, don't let that deter you, overall, great book.
Rating: 
Summary: I laughed out loud!
Review: I took this book with me on a vacation and I read part of it on the airplane and I laughed so hard at some points that I know other passengers were looking at me.
I found this book to be truly delightful. I was sad to come to the end because it was so enjoyable. I have since loaned it to several friends, all of them enjoyed it as much as I did.
I can't wait to read Ms. Cohen's new book, Much Ado About Jesse Kaplan!
Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A Real Belly Laugh
Review: I was dubious when I saw the cover.. but several people at the Jane Austen Society of NA conference I was attending were very enthustic about it.. so I took a chance... A fast, fun read... chapters are very short.. which invites frequent pauses.. but once you start.. you can't stop.. thoroughly entertaining... it would help if it came with a yiddish pocket dictionary.. I loved the characters but would have liked to know more about the principal, May Newman, around whom all others circulate... but then how much do we know about the real Jane Bennet? Never a slow moment... keep a list of characters on a bookmark to keep track of them... Can't wait to see more fiction by this author!
Rating:
Summary: Delightful! A Definite '10'
Review: If it's true that 'laughter is the best medicine' this book is a perfect remedy. It's funny, charming, witty and very well written. A great read for everyone..young and old. I found myself laughing with tears rolling down my cheeks at some of the antics. The Valentines Dance and the Loehman's shopping expedition were a riot. May, Lila, Flo, Carol and the Boca Gang were a delightul group who I was sorry to leave. I'll be singing their praises and anxiously look forward to Paula Marantz Cohen's next project.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious as AND well written
Review: It is obvious this book was written by an English professor. How refreshing! It is a hoot - very, very entertaining. I can tell a book will be good when I start casting for the movie in my mind (Rita Moreno as Lila, Bea Arthur or Olympia Dukakis as Flo and Sally Field with aging make-up as May, although we could re-think the May casting). This is a vacation read (or in my case a week-end read, as I couldn't put it down). Buy the book! Let's encourage Professor Cohen to write again. I'd hate to lose sight of these delightful ladies.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Waste of Money
Review: It seems this book was enjoyed by all who have reviewed it so far, so I know I'm in the minority when I say I regret having spent my money on it. I bought it because it was touted as a clever update of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, only set in a Jewish senior citizen complex in Florida. What's not to like? Plenty, in my view:1. A muddled point of view. The book opens with what appears to be the story of Carol Newman, a youngish woman plotting to assist the love life of her reluctant mother-in-law by setting her up with a wealthy widow. It quickly becomes apparent, though, that this is not Carol's story at all. Unlike Pride and Prejudice, where it is very clear that Elizabeth Bennett is the protagonist, I found it hard to tell who the main character was supposed to be: May, the mother-in-law, who is so thinly drawn that she's almost a cipher; Flo, her acerbic friend, perhaps the most fully realized of the female characters but still one-dimensional; or Lila, another friend who makes brief but insubstantial appearances. Because the characters are so superficially drawn, it becomes hard to empathize with any of them and,for me, impacted any possible enjoyment of the novel. This book would have benefitted from having a clear protagonist from whose point of view the entire story is told. 2. Too much "telling" rather than "showing." A good writer makes characters and situations come alive by dramatizing them, so that we see the characters set in motion and come to appreciate them based on their actions. Perhaps the author's "day job" as an English professor intruded too much here, because she tended to be very didactic and to have characters sum up changes in attitude/behavior in lengthy monologues, rather than showing this to the reader with action. An example: the author intends it to be a pivotal moment in her story when the wealthy widow, Norman Grafstein, finally stops playing the field and settles on May as his interest, but we see nothing of what led up to his choice. Instead, we are given a summary of it: "Suddenly he saw things differently...it suddenly seemed obvious to him that May was the sweetest woman he had ever met. He would be happy to have her as his date for what remained of his life." A modern reader is too sophisticated to appreciate things being spelled out for her in this way. It's rather like reading the Cliff Notes version of a novel, instead of having the pleasure of watching the story unfold. 3. There is no conflict in the book. Having conflict, or obstacles characters must overcome, always makes a story more engrossing. Here, there is nothing at stake for any of the characters, who are comfortably well off in retirement, don't seem particularly lonely or sad, and for whom choosing marriage or romance at this stage in their lives seems about as eventful or significant as deciding between whether to have the fruit cup or the spongecake for dessert. The only possible exception to this is the character of Lila, who needs to supplement her retirement income to continue to live in the complex and seeks a husband for this purpose, but her character is so thinly drawn, the prospective husband arrives, woos her, and marries her so effortlessly, that her story is devoid of any drama. 4. The author has centered her story around Jewish seniors and so makes every effort to provide a sense of them as a subculture. At times, however, she will use Yiddishisms that she doesn't define, which makes it difficult for a non Jewish reader to understand. This keeps the story from having a universal appeal. 5. Many of the chapters begin with lengthy and unneccesary exposition. For example, the author can't seem to talk about seniors auditing classes at a local college without giving all the excess detail of how the practice started, what happened, why it was partially curtailed, etc. She does the same with numerous incidents: excruciating detail about how the senior citizen complex prepared for the arrival of members' grandchildren, how the complex's board worked, how parties were planned for. This disrupts the narrative structure of the story and is another example of the author's penchant for didactics over plot. When all this unnecessary exposition is subtracted from the novel, precious little of a plot remains. It is my experience from reading reviews on Amazon.com that the majority of people who submit a review on a particular book do so because they enjoyed it, but I think another point of view can be helpful to a reader contemplating buying a book. For this one, I would recommend borrowing it from a friend or the library, rather than purchasing it. I also think it has a limited appeal. If you like sweet stories about not particularly nuanced characters, all of whom get their own happy ending after no discernible struggle, you'll like this book.
Rating:
Summary: A satisfying and fast paced novel despite a predictable end
Review: Jane Austen's classic novel PRIDE AND PREJUDICE begins with the oft-repeated line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Paula Marantz Cohen lets her readers know, right on the opening page, that she is of a similar mind. "Take it from me," the book opens, "A nice widower with a comfortable living can be nudged into settling down by a not-so-young woman who plays her cards right." Her debut novel, JANE AUSTEN IN BOCA, takes the action and gentle intrigue of Jane Austen's 18th century country gentry and schleps them all the way to a Jewish "retirement club" in Boca Raton, Florida. In this club, dogs wear embroidered jackets because in Boca "many dog owners feel their pets should be entitled to enjoy an accessory now and then." It is a sweet and gentle look into the lives and loves of some pretty hilarious senior citizens. I'm way under 70 and about as WASP-y as they come, but I still liked it. The central plot of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE concerns the very British Bennet family's attempts to marry off their five daughters and all the subterfuge and machinations contained therein. The first two-thirds of Cohen's book borrows fairly heavily from Austen's classic. All the main characters are here. Elizabeth Bennet is now Flo Kliman, a retired University of Chicago librarian, while Elizabeth's sister Jane shows up as May Newman, a softhearted widow. Mrs. Bennet is turned into May's daughter-in-law Carol, a woman who "was constantly striving to improve the lives of those around her, whether they liked it or not." Carol believes May is depressed and needs some companionship, preferably of the Jewish widower variety. She, like Mrs. Bennet, hopes to help her mother-in-law snag a live one, whether May likes it or not. The man for whom Carol sets her cap (a turquoise sequined cap, I'm sure) is Norman Grafstein, a fellow Boca resident and acquaintance from back home. The courtship of these two septuagenarians is, of course, not a smooth road --- nor is the improbable but inevitable romance that develops between May's friend Flo and Norman's friend Stan, the Elizabeth and Darcy of the book. In a portrayal of retired life that is neither overly sentimental nor tragic, Cohen allows her characters to be real people who enjoy and embrace life. The men, especially, view their retirement as a second youth. Feel free to insert your own Viagra joke here. The women form remarkably close friendships with each other --- and at times, it sounds more like they are all kids away at summer camp than in their "twilight years." Like Jane Austen, Cohen has a flair for observations and dry humor. Carol, who is a force of nature, is seen by May as "the incarnation of a good fairy in the guise of a suburban yenta." On noticing another friend's "unusually extensive cleavage," Flo thinks, "breasts, beyond the age of forty-five, she took to be assets best kept under cover. Flo was distinctly in the minority among her peers in Boca Raton, however, where cleavage was as common as Bermuda shorts and often worn with them." Cohen's story is much less pointed than Austen's. Her characters may be fools, but they are well-meaning fools. The plot moves quickly, as one might expect with a novel that weighs in at only 258 pages, but one has plenty of time to get to know the characters and to root for them as they find much deserved happiness. In EMMA, another of Jane Austen's classics, she writes, "Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable." Cohen must have taken this advice to heart, as the reader will probably see the end coming a mile away. It may be predictable and fluffy, but JANE AUSTEN IN BOCA is satisfying, like a nice chewy bagel or maybe some mandelbrot or some kugel or a sweet piece of rugelach. Maybe my next book should be a cookbook. --- Reviewed by Shannon Bloomstran
Rating:
Summary: Triumph of the Yenta
Review: Thanks to the Jewish version of the English yenta in Pride and Prejudice, we busybodies once again win the day and prove that it's not always bad to snoop into somebody else's business. This book is for anyone who has ever fixed two people up on a blind date or who has ever known that they had the secret of someone else's happiness. Enjoy and learn that the older we get, the more we stay the same.
Rating: 
Summary: A clever premise, but somewhat plodding
Review: The idea behind Jane Austen in Boca is a clever one. The plot of Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice is updated and plays itself out among the over-seventy crowd of Jewish retirees living it up in Boca Raton, Florida. Instead of a mother of five girls--Austen's Mrs. Bennett--doing her utmost to marry off her progeny, there is the hyper-organized and resourceful Carol, who sets the action of the book in motion by scheming to revitalize the social life of her widowed mother-in-law, May Newman. Cohen's story revolves around the friendship and love lives of May (think Austen's Jane Bennett) and her friends Florence (Elizabeth Bennett) and Lila, all of whom live in Boca Festa, one of Boca's myriad retirement communities. While the garrulous and crass Hy Marcus woos Lila, May and Florence enjoy relationships with Cohen's updated versions of Charles Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy, respectively Norman Grafstein and his surly friend Stan Jacobs. If you're familiar with the plot of Pride and Prejudice, you won't be surprised by the turns these relationships take. If you haven't read Austen's novel, however, don't panic: you don't have to know the plot of the original story to enjoy Cohen's reanimation of it. But you may have to be over sixty and Jewish. At least I'm assuming that the book will play better among readers who identify more than I with its characters. While I found May and Florence and their respective beaux likeable enough, and I enjoyed the foray into Florida's community of relatively well-to-do codgers, I found the book plodding and its dialogue often boring. The frequent references to the characters' Jewish identity, meanwhile, were irksome: "I feel like I'm seventeen, being whisked away to play hooky by the high-school quarterback," said Flo, looking at Mel's handsome profile as they sped off. "No football, I'm afraid, swimming--the Jewish contact sport. I wanted to play football, only my mother wouldn't let me. I was too precious, she said. She held my price very high, you see, which spoiled me for hard labor." "The standard recipe for the Jewish prince," observed Flo. "But you seem to have accomplished a great deal, all things considered, and turned out better than most." There's a lot of this sort of thing. If you care how Mel turned out in fact, and if you don't find the above snippet of dialogue dreadfully dull, by all means, read the book. I suspect that a lot of readers will in fact like it, and that my reaction to it is somehow aberrant, so I shan't stand in your way.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal!
Review: This book is so well written, and so funny that I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times. If you've every been to Loehmann's dressing room or listened to the gossip around a pool in southern Florida, then sit back and enjoy yourself. Paul Marantz Cohen has this particular slice of life down pat!!
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