The Jane Austen Book Club

by Karen Joy Fowler

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A book club discuss the works of Jane Austen and experience their own affairs of the heart in this charming “tribute to Austen that manages to capture her spirit” (The Boston Globe).

In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.

Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

• ISBN10: 0452286530
• ISBN13: 9780452286535
• Publish Date: 26 April 2005 (first published 1 April 2004)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: G P Putnam's Sons
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780452286535

Reviews

I didn't like The Jane Austen Book Club at ALL.

I expected this book to be a tribute to Jane Austen, her life and her novels and for there to be great character development and relationships that are influenced by Jane Austen and her novels.

Instead, I ended up getting flashbacks from six characters that I formed NO connection with and present-day friendships and relationships that I couldn't care less about. Everything in this book is extremely shallow.

After finishing this book, I still don't understand what it's purpose is...

The Jane Austen Book Club is putdownable, forgettable and uninteresting.

[ibeforem]

I guess this is one of those books that you should only read if you’ve also read a lot of Austen, because I just didn’t get it at all. And it definitely wasn’t witty.

The only character that was actually interesting was Grigg, the sole man in the group. Compared to him, the rest of them seemed like unhappy, bitter old ladies, even though two of them are not old at all. Most of the time, it seemed like they didn’t even like each other all that much, and it made me wonder why they even had a book club at all. Especially a book club with such a limited scope. They don’t even continue once they’re finished the Austen books! What kind of book club is that? Plus, their conversations about the books weren’t even particularly interesting.

We won’t even speak of the horridly annoying use of first person (us, we) in the narration.

Maybe I was missing some sort of subtle connection in each chapter that related to the Austen book they were discussing, but based on some other reviews I’ve seen, I don’t think I was. I have heard that the movie is actually good, so this may be one of the rare instances of the movie being better than the book.

[cherryblossommj]

I just listened to the first CD and I'm not sure that I will ever attempt to listen/read the rest of this book. It's just too sexy for me. I'm just not into that kind of thing being in my plots. Although, I do love Jane Austen, I just couldn't get past the junk to get to her importance here.