The Jane Austen Book Club [Paperback]

The book has an interesting premise: "Each of us has a private Austen." The premise is explored by having five women and one man meet for a few occasions to discuss their favorite Austen novels. By choosing the novels they choose and what they have to say about them, the characters unintentionally reveal lots about themselves. At the same time, their private lives and loves move in mysterious ways to become harmonious. It's all very Austenish, if it's not very good Austen.

Joycelyn is the perpetual matchmaker, who never finds a match for herself. She thought of starting the Austen book club and recruited its members. Bernadette is an older woman who has moved past pretension and appreciates the humor in life. Grigg is a bachelor whose tastes usually run to science fiction and who has a little trouble fitting in with the women. Sylvia is Joycelyn's oldest friend, and her marriage has just broken up . . . despite Jocelyn having fixed Sylvia up with her husband, Daniel, who was Joycelyn's boy friend originally. Daniel has now flown to a new love. Allegra is the most spirited member of the group, and she's deep into her lesbian love life although not always clear about what's going on there. Allegra is Sylvia's daughter. Prudie is the most serious Austen student, and appreciates all aspects of her writing. Prudie is a high school French teacher who likes to share phrases a little too much and is the only person with an on-going marriage.

The book alternates between relating snatches of the book club meetings with looking into the personal relationships of the members. The book club snatches are a bit too brief for my taste and almost seem designed to avoid offending those who might not know anything about Austen.

If you haven't read everything that Jane Austen wrote, there's a brief set of notes on each novel discussed in this book starting on page 252.

The best part of the book's back materials comes though in quotes from Jane Austen's family and friends about her writing, and prominent writers since then. These sections are worth the price of the book alone! Very nice.

I enjoyed the book, but it fell below my expectations. I suspect the problem was that the book is too short to fully develop the characters, relationships and the book club interactions. You are expected to "fill in the gaps" without many dots to use. I found myself comparing this book to the non-fiction, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and found this book looking light in the comparison.

I did not enjoy the characters, actually if truth be known they had nothing to make me care about them, Reading this I kept feeling that any momnet it was going to get interesting, sadly that did not happen and I arrived at the end wondering what had been the point, it did not even make me want to revisit any Austen novels but it did make me wonder how she would have felt having such a poorly written book entertwined with some of hers.... I think disappointed would probably cover it.

Rather, like my own private Austen, it is cynical, intelligent and more than a little barbed as Fowler introduces us to the six members of the Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club: Jocelyn, Sylvia, Bernadette, Allegra, Prudie and Grigg.

There were a few moments at the beginning when I felt a little uneasy. I wasn't prepared for the sex scenes (this is supposed to be Jane Austen territory after all) but Fowler has an eye for detail and I pressed on. Luckily I soon started to warm to the quintet of club members (particularly Grigg) and by the end I felt I wanted to hug them all. They emerge fully-rounded and the author seems equally adept at describing the lives of middle-aged Sylvia and Jocelyn as she does the dynamics of teenage friendships amongst Prudie's school students. She even makes the most prosaic things come alive. I loved the descriptions of summer evenings on Valley verandas as characters munch slices of Kentucky bourbon cake, creme de menthe squares and almond crescent cookies.

Austen herself even makes an appearance of a kind towards the end to nudge the plot along, in the form of a doctored black magic 8-ball created by the artistic Allegra. As the novel closes things become ever more Austen-like as the group hastens towards a happy conclusion.

Fowler's playfulness reminded me of the campus novels of David Lodge, with something of the sensibility of Alice Sebold thrown in, as she mixes the story of the book club with straight-faced accounts of characters' dreams or hobbies and real-life critiques of Austen novels.

I'm still not sure how Allegra managed to find the only taxi driver in Rome who doesn't speak English (has Fowler never visited the city?) or how Jocelyn, working in accounts at a small vineyard, manages to live in the most expensive house, but JABC made me laugh out loud. It is my favourite book of 2004.