Jane Austen Book Club [Hardcover]

Karen Joy Fowler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2004

Six people five women and a man meet once a month in California's Central Valley to discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy, but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen a couple of them even fall in love 'A thoroughly delightful comedy of contemporary manners' Entertainment Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With its many section breaks and point-of-view shifts, Fowler's newest book (following Sister Noon) poses significant challenges for a single narrator. But stage actress Schraf overcomes these obstacles with ease, her voice taking on just a touch of haughtiness for the chapters told from the "we" perspective and then switching back to an unassuming tone for the third-person sections. It may take listeners a short while to grasp the story's structure, but once they do, they'll be hopelessly snared by this witty look at the lives and loves of six people, all members of Central Valley, California's "all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club." As the members discuss Austen's stance on marriage, social status and love, the narrative meanders, touching on defining moments in the characters' lives and then drifting back to describe their current dilemmas: single, middle-aged Jocelyn has never been in love; French teacher Prudie can't stop thinking about men other than her husband; chatty Bernadette has decided to "let herself go"; warm-hearted Sylvia still loves her soon-to-be-ex-husband; emotional Allegra has left her girlfriend; and sci-fi aficionado Grigg is infatuated with someone who may not share his affection. Through subtle alterations of tone and inflection, Schraf neatly conveys the emotions and idiosyncrasies of each character, from Prudie's impossibly pretentious French asides to Bernadette's airy, endless storytelling. Playful and intelligent, this audiobook embodies the best of both the written and aural worlds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Fowler, a captivating and good-hearted satirist, exuberantly pays homage to and matches wits with Jane Austen in her most pleasurable novel to date by portraying six irresistible Californians who meet once a month to discuss Austen's six novels. Coyly shifting points of view, Fowler subtly uses her characters' responses to Austen as entree into their poignant and often hilarious life stories. The book club is Jocelyn's idea, a fiftysomething gal who seems to prefer the company of her show dogs to men. She has known Sylvia since grade school, and even used to date Sylvia's husband, who has abruptly moved out, inspiring their beautiful, accident-prone, lesbian artist daughter, Allegra, to move back in and join the book club along with her mother. Also on board are disheveled and loquacious Bernadette; Prudie, a high-school French teacher; and Grigg, the only man. Fowler shares Austen's fascination with the power of stories, and explores the same timeless aspects of human behavior that Austen so masterfully dramatizes, while capturing with anthropological acuity and electrifying humor the oddities of our harried world. Fellow Austenites will love Fowler's fluency in the great novelist's work; every reader will relish Fowler's own ebullient comedy of manners, and who knows how many book clubs will be inspired by this charming paean to books and readers. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670915580
• ISBN-13: 978-0670915583
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (317 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,976,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fun, Cleverly Crafted, Witty and Thoroughly Modern Tale, May 1, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jane Austen Book Club (Hardcover)

According to Jocelyn, it is "essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly...let her look around." This is exactly her aim when she launches the "all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club" and invites five of her friends and acquaintances to meet and discuss one of Austen's novels every month.

Each of the members "has a private Austen," Karen Joy Fowler tells us in the opening line of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. For Jocelyn, a compulsive matchmaker and organizer extraordinaire of other people's lives, Austen "wrote wonderful novels about love and courtship, but never married." Bernadette, the oldest member of the group, has lived a colorful sixty-seven years, including a brief foray into show business and several trips to the altar. Her private Austen is "a comic genius."

Sylvia, Jocelyn's childhood friend, has recently separated from her husband of thirty-two years. Not being a happy ending person, Sylvia's Austen is more practical --- "a daughter, a sister, an aunt." For Sylvia's daughter Allegra --- a strikingly beautiful, self-described "garden-variety lesbian" --- Austen writes about "the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women."

Prudie, a high school French teacher afraid to visit France because it might not live up to her expectations, is the youngest member of the group at twenty-eight. Her Austen is the one "whose books changed every time you read them, so that one year they were all romances and the next, you suddenly noticed Austen's cool, ironic prose."

As for Grigg, no one knows who his private Austen is. The only man in the group, he initially raises suspicion among the other members --- for being a man, for being a man in a Jane Austen book club, and for showing up at the first meeting with an obviously brand new collection of Austen's works.

Chapter by chapter, Fowler uses a different Austen novel to illuminate each of her characters. As the months flow by, Jocelyn, Bernadette, Sylvia, Allegra, Prudie and Grigg each face their own changes and challenges. Life, death, marriage, love and friendship were subjects that made for great storytelling in Jane Austen's day ... and they still do, two hundred years later in twenty-first century California.

It will make for a richer reading experience if you're familiar with Austen's novels, but don't despair if you're not; turn to the back of the book for a synopsis of each story. When you finish the last page of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, you won't be able to resist the urge to more thoroughly acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with EMMA, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, NORTHANGER ABBEY, MANSFIELD PARK and PERSUASION. You might even have a better appreciation for them having read this book first.

In 1826, Sir Walter Scott said about the late Jane Austen, "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with.... The exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me."

What was denied Sir Walter Scott flows effortlessly through Karen Joy Fowler's pen. THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is a pleasure to read. It is a fun, cleverly crafted, witty and thoroughly modern tale that shows us exactly why Austen's novels retain their timeless appeal. Like Austen, Fowler paints the everyday in such a way that makes it easily recognizable, capturing the subtleties of social interaction, family dynamics, the complexities of friendship, the nuances of courtship and the fragility of life.

Included in the book is a reading group guide with a twist --- each of the six characters has contributed "questions for discussion." One of Sylvia's questions asks, "Is a good book better the second time around?" I'll know the answer as soon as I finish reading THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB ... again.

--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna

77 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Loved This Book, August 28, 2004

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Jane Austen Book Club (Hardcover)

I see here that not everyone agrees with me, but I loved The Jane Austen Book Club. I thought it was cleverly written with wonderful characters and very, very witty. The premise is this: a loosely-connected group of acquaintences forms a book club to discuss Jane Austen's works. Each chapter of the novel focuses both on the Austen book at hand, and the life of the book club member hosting the meeting that month. With six members of the club--well, you are not going to be able to get into the nitty gritty of each member's life without a long, drawn-out magnum opus. Fowler instead chooses to focus on a few events in the various character's lives. They all know each other, so the various members pop up in the other chapters as well. The novel is narrated by all of the book club members, speaking as one voice, which Fowler uses to her advantage on many humorous occasions. Each character is wonderful, yet flawed. The novel is a comedy of manners in the modern sense. You will recognize parts of yourself and others you know in many of the characters. There is no true "plot" to this story, although the love lives of many of the members, while unresolved at the beginning of the novel, resolve themselves towards the end. The lack of plot doesn't matter, however, in this truly cleverly written, enjoyable, engaging novel. I think this one is a must for anyone who loves to read--you don't have to be an Austen fan to enjoy it. I for one think this novel deserves the hype, and believe me, I was pretty sceptical at first. Enjoy this one: it is a treasure.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An ode to the timelessness of human relationships, April 22, 2004

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Jane Austen Book Club (Hardcover)

The timelessness of human relationships, the nature of love and the question of happy endings is the central focus of Karen Joy Fowler's whimsical and breezy twenty-first century comedy of manners. Like Austen, Fowler is a master of wit and irony, and with memorable, endearing characters, The Jane Austen Book Club provides a wonderful example of the paradoxes and incongruities that exist in modern human relationships, while also brimming over with astute observations of our foibles and follies. The author has a tart, and gentle manner in which she retells the mistakes and misunderstandings that complicate even our most well-intentioned relationships.

The narrative focuses on a pre-established book club made of up five women and one inscrutable man who meet on a monthly basis to discuss the novels of Jane Austen, one at a time. While deliberating the ins and outs of Austin's characters, they gradually divulge their own private insecurities and Austen-like foibles. There is Jocelyn who has everyone's best interests at heart, along with a strong matchmaking impulse, and an instinct for tidiness. And Prudie, with the years receding behind her like a map "with no landmarks, a handful of air, another of water." There's Silvia who wants to slip off while the author's back is turned "to find love in her own way" showing up in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face. And then there is Allegra, an out lesbian who is a creature of extremes "either stuffed, starving, freezing or boiling, exhausted or electric with energy." She's a liberated woman who sees the world as an obstacle course where you pick your way across it while "the terrain slips about and things fall or explode."

The conversation, like the conversation on Austen is variously shrewd, inconsequential, apparent and amusing, and the drama of each character's lives unfolds at a fast pace. Every month they take a breather from their exhausted lives and sit around talking about their personal daydreams while serving "green salad made with dried cranberries, and candied walnuts, artichoke dips, cheeses, and peppered crackers" (it sounds delicious!). Fowler combines a gentle, uncomplicated way of writing with wonderful powers of description; she sees "the fingernail moon slicing open the clouds, and she describes Allegra's face as "having a silent-screen-star expressiveness and a lunar polish."

Like Austen, Fowler is also exposing and revealing the pursuit of love and saying that virtue, in whatever form, will be recognized, and rewarded. How love will prevail, how life can be a romance, and that happiness in marriage and relationships is mostly a matter of chance, is at the thematic heart of The Jane Austen Book Club. This is a quirky, whimsical and highly original novel and reinforces the notion that relationships and human frailties are not that much different today than they were in Austen's time. Mike Leonard April 04.