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.