The Jane Austen Book Club

by Karen Joy Fowler

[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.