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.

Jocelyn, the founder, is single like Austen and much like Emma in personality, a woman who enjoys being in control and who has done some match-making. Allegra, a determined feminist with a female lover, is concerned with the financial implications of marriage in general and specifically in Sense and Sensibility. Prudie, a French teacher and former dancer, resembles Fanny Price in Mansfield Park when a student makes suggestive passes at her a la Henry Crawford. Grigg, the only man in the group, is a mystery to the members, but as the novel unfolds, we see his life paralleling The Mysteries of Udolpho (also summarized), on which Northanger Abbey was modeled. The forgetful Bernadette is naturally funny, a woman who enjoys the humor and happy endings of Pride and Prejudice. And Sylvia, whose husband has just left her after thirty years, is a genealogist whose life, as it unfolds here, contains parallels to Persuasion.

The novel is genuinely funny, though some parallels with Austen are more carefully developed than others. Jocelyn's explanation of dog show behavior sounds very like Austen's depiction of aristocratic parties and dances. One chapter at a modern benefit dance may be a far cry from Austen, but it has similar complications. Romance, always full of complexities in Austen, is equally complex here, but happy endings rule in both. The novel's weakness lies in its fragmentation. With six intricate Austen novels to keep track of, and the backgrounds and relationships of six modern characters to examine for parallels, the focus is too broad to lead to any identification with the modern characters, except as they illustrate Austen. And while Austen's novels reflect universal human qualities, this one is firmly grounded in the eccentricities of its twentieth century participants. Though frivolous, the novel is still clever and great fun for Austen lovers. Mary Whipple