The Jane Austen Book Club: Not Just for Janeites, This Book Has a Lot Going for it

Let me first say that I am a die-hard Jane Austen freak. From the moment I got my eager 8-year-old hands on a Penguin Abridged copy of Pride and Prejudice, I have been hooked on her. So, naturally when my eye was caught by a novel called "The Jane Austen Book Club", I had to check it out. I realize that not everyone will be similarly predisposed to adore this book even before reading a single page of it. However, in my biased view, I think Janeites and non-Janeites alike will find quite a bit to like in this 2005 novel by Karen Joy Fowler (PLUME Books).�

The book club consists of six members, covering the spectrum in terms of personality type, age and degree of Austen devotion. Fowler divides her book up into six chapters, one for each of Jane Austen's completed novels. In each chapter the book club discusses one of the novels and we get a behind-the-scenes peek at one of the main characters. We also find out how they are connected to one another in a natural unfolding of histories, similar to the way we would discover these things in real life.

One of the strongest connections is between Jocelyn and Sylvia, two 50-somethings who have been friends since middle school. Jocelyn is the instigator and leader of the book club, and appears at first to be a stand-in for Jane Austen herself. She has never married, is extremely practical and a bit of a control freak. However, as the story progresses, Jocelyn actually gets to play the unlikely role of a middle-aged Elizabeth Bennet. Her romance with Grigg, the Jane Austen novice of the group, has quite a few parallels with Pride and Prejudice.

Sylvia is struggling with her recent divorce from her husband Daniel, who was her high school sweetheart. Her daughter Allegra joins the book club to support her mom. Even though she is not a devoted Austen fan like some of the others, she is a quintessential Austen heroine. She is beautiful, tempestous, energetic, and given to strong emotions. Can someone say Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility? Allegra, Sylvia and Daniel eventually get caught up in a scenario involving a rock-climbing wall that closely resembles scenes from Persuasion.

One of the most surprising characters is Bernadette, a seemingly sweet and boring character who starts out expressing a lot of tired opinions about Austen's characters. Just when you are about to write her off and skip over her dialogue, however, you discover her interesting past and many husbands, one of whom sounds an awful lot like Wickham from Pride and Prejudice. Then there is French-spouting Prudie, who resembles prudish Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Like Fanny, she is difficult to love but you can't readily say why.

Finally there is the lone man in the group, Grigg, who meets Jocelyn by chance while she is attending a Hound Club meeting and he is at a science fiction convention. As if his dubious hobby were not bad enough, he appears at the first book club meeting with a brand new complete works of Jane Austen, and later admits that Northanger Abbey is his favorite Austen book, horror of horrors. (Northanger Abbey is generally considered to be something of a bastard child; some fans even claim that Austen never wrote it). I love the way that he challenges Jocelyn's views on everything - romance, men, even science fiction.

This is a quiet gem of a book, very well written and structured in an interesting way that completely makes sense afterwards. For Janeites, there are a million references to her books and characters. There is even a delicious series of e-mails that pay homage to Austen's device of using letters to develop the story. For non-Janeites there is plenty to captivate in her quirky, believable characters and their stories.