chunk: Old Friends and New Fancies is set in the same time as Austen's own novels and is similarly structured, with a focus on the challenges of matchmaking among pairs of lovers kept apart by various social and economic tensions. It has something of a postmodern overtone in that it mixes together characters from all six of Austen's major novels, creating an enormously extended network of friends, relations, and acquaintances. For example, Elizabeth (Bennet) Darcy (of Pride and Prejudice), Elinor (Dashwood) Ferrars (of Sense and Sensibility), and Anne (Elliot) Wentworth (of Persuasion) are all friends. Despite the fact that Brinton provides a full list of characters (sorted by their source books), keeping the cast straight is something many readers complain about, since quite a few of the characters are only mentioned in passing. Most of the characters are recognizably the same, though several have improvedâamong them Kitty Bennet and Tom Bertramâwhile George Knightley is somewhat sourer