The Jane Austen Book Club

Rating:
Summary: Great stuff!
Review: I'll be the first to admit that I'm a sucker for a great premise or unusual form of a book. Certain ones just grab my attention and I'm hooked. "The Curious Incident" comes to mind first---a story told through the eyes of someone with autism. Then there's "The Bark of the Dogwood"---a novel within a novel, entertaining, funny, and ultimately disturbing. Enter "The Jane Austen Book Club": Five women and one man, sitting around discussing Jane Austen's books. One previous review used the phrase "No straight line here" and that's an understatement. Fowler lets us in on what her characters are like via snippets of their personal lives and habits, and while the text wanders, twists and turns, and sprawls out on the floor, it somehow DOES make sense. The conversations range from mundane to sad, and from funny to disturbing. All-in-all it's a good time couched in a unique form with excellent writing and and even better followthrough.

Rating:
Summary: The Jane Austen WASP club
Review: I've had some extra time this summer to catch up on some reading. I've even been able to explore some of the newer books that are out and with all the reviews I've read here and the ads that are blarin all over the place, surely, I thought this would be a good one. Maybe I'm not exactly up on Austen--I realize this could be the problem--but the story and its characters didn't fulfill. I liked "The Secret Life of Bees" (and that is a bit corny) better only because, at least, the writer aimed to entertain and to give us a story and a bit of the "brown suger". Sorry, but this book pales (pun not intended) next to "Simon Lazarus". It's a totally different book from this, true, but readers will be delighted, fulfilled, and yes, perhaps, enlightened. Now THAT book's a winner. And deserves so much more praise than this--I'm sorry. And as far as that WASP, Alice Sebold--she can eat this all she wants--honey, I read that very WHITE chick's book and after the first 125 pages (which were actually good!)--it was all downhill in a Presbyterian handbasket!

Rating:
Summary: A funny, fabulous book
Review: I've loved Karen Joy Fowler's books for years, and this newest is a wonderful, wonderful, blissfully happy and funny novel. My mother and I have been calling each other up on the phone to read our favorite sentences. I can't think of another writer where I've done that. One favorite bit:

"Bernadette was our oldest member, just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She'd recently announced that she was, officially, letting herself go. 'I just don't look in the mirror anymore,' she'd told us. 'I wish I'd thought of it years ago . . . .

'Like a vampire,' she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires always managed to look so dapper. It seemed that more of them should look like Bernadette."

I'm a recovering member of a book club, and now wish desperately that I was in one again, so that I could talk about this book, and about Jane Austen. I'm also a former bookstore clerk, so I also have a final recommendation: if you like The Jane Austen Book Club, and want more Fowler, then go hunt down a copy of Fowler's The Sweetheart Season, which is about a women's baseball team at the end of WWII.

Three cheers (and five stars) for The Jane Austen Book Club! Three cheers for Jane Austen! And three cheers for Karen Joy Fowler!

Rating:
Summary: "Jane Austen all the time."
Review: Karen Joy Fowler's "The Jane Austen Book Club" is a delightful blend of the old and the new. With smooth and effortless style, the author relates how six people, one man and five women, come together to talk about Jane Austen's books. During the meetings of the book club, not only do the members explore Jane Austen's life and novels, but they also reveal a great deal about themselves.

Jocelyn and Sylvia are in their early fifties and have been friends since they were eleven. Bernadette is sixty-seven and although she has made a career out of being married, she is currently single. Allegra, Sylvia's daughter, is a blunt and beautiful woman, with a quick wit and an acerbic tongue. Sylvia's husband, Daniel, has just asked for a divorce after over thirty years of marriage. She is still bewildered by the changes in her life. Prudie is the only happily married member of the club. She teaches French and has an irritating and pretentious habit of dropping French phrases into the conversation without translating them. Grigg is a man in his early forties who doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the book club, but he does provide a much-needed male perspective.

Fowler is deliciously witty. She pokes fun at and deconstructs, among other things, book clubs, friendship, marriage, and Jane Austen. At the same time, Fowler brings her six protagonists into focus, giving us a peek into their childhoods and providing perspective on how they became who they are now.

Jane Austen's books are worlds unto themselves. Austen cleverly and astutely examined the mores of her time, especially as they related to love and marriage. Fowler does the same. She reveals that each of her characters has suffered disappointments and harbors painful memories and secrets. None of them, however, has given up on life.

The dialogue in this novel is hilarious and poignant. The author includes a summary of Austen's novels at the back, along with a droll, tongue-in-cheek "Reader's Guide" that is the essential element of all modern book clubs. In addition, Fowler adds a lengthy section in which she gives critics of Jane Austen their say. Whether or not you are a lover of Jane Austen or a member of a book club, you will find much to enjoy in this breezy and entertaining novel.

Rating:
Summary: Warning to Jane Austen fans
Review: WARNING TO ALL JANE AUSTEN FANS! WARNING TO ALL JANE AUSTEN FANS! DO NOT--I REPEAT--DO NOT BUY THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. It is a ruse. The author is using the popularity of Jane Austen to sell her book but believe me, she is not a true fan. The author obviously understands rudimentary Jane Austen but she lacks the ability to bring Jane's subtle observations into her inane dialog and 2-dimensional characters.

The author makes fun of Jane Austen throughout the book in subtle ways. This is evidenced in one way by a scene in which one of the characters defends the fact that Jane Austen does INDEED HAVE GOOD PLOTS! Of course this author thought she could write a book without a plot--as she "sees Jane Austen doing"--and come out with a best-selling book. I am sad to say that is exactly what has happened, thanks to a "glowing" book review in the New York Times and people loving Jane Austen and being duped. It is not clever or funny or witty in any way. It is slow and plodding and so boring, you wonder why you keep on reading it.

The first few chapters have some promise of linking us to Jane Austen--but that is minimal and then in the following chapters, it peters out to nothing. When I read the author's synopsis of each book discussed by the book club, it was clear to me that the author did not like Jane Austen. "One boring character marries another boring character" is typical of her summaries. This author is duplicitous and would not know good writing if it jumped up and bit her on her butt. Not only does the artistry in her writing suck but her ability to accurately use the English language sucks. She uses the word "effect" when she should have used the word "affect". Minor point--but still--how does someone like this get published and given a good review from the New York Times? AMAZING!!!