Monday, January 7, 2013

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

I first reviewed this book March 4, 2010

The prologue of this book begins with "Each of us has a private Austen." Then Fowler takes a small section to describe the characters of the book by relating them to their "private Austen." There are five women and one man. I loved the book but will admit with six main characters I had to make a cheat - sheet. First I listed their name, then a trait about each one to help me remember who's who. The cover of my copy has a picture of the characters from the movie. So I then went to the internet and looked up the information of the movie and figured out who played which part (it actually wasn't hard to figure out Grigg) :) so I could picture the correct person in the correct part.


I don't know about you, but when I read a book first, the movie always disappoints me because directors never pick the correct actors for the parts!! 

Anyway - I have lots of flags in this book. But most are too long for a blog.  But here's one of the shorter ones as an example of the authors wit throughout the book:

Jocelyn was trying to fix Sylvia up with Grigg and this is the conversation

                                                  Sylvia: "Well, I don't want him. Do you like him?"
                                                Jocelyn: "I'm too old for him."
                                                 Sylvia: "And yet I'm not."
                                                Jocelyn: "He was to be a fling [for you]."
                                                 Sylvia: "Then you fling him."

For some reason I thought this was hilarious! I really enjoyed reading this book. It's about a book club made up of all ages, marriages are tested, love happens - unsuitable things become suitable. I had this book on my shelf along time before finally reading it, I'm not sure why I thought I wouldn't like it, because I did.

It made me want to reread some of Austen's books. 


Fowler is witty and her characters are appealing. It's just a fun book to read.

I highly recommend this book.

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