Fiction: The Jane Austen Book Club

 It is difficult to know what to say about Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club since I am not in the least a Jane Austen fan. Not that you needed to be in order to read this charming novel about the monthly book club meetings revolving around the passing glimpses of the seven members. The token male member, Grigg, was my personal favorite, despite the fact that I was almost sure that he was gay throughout the book from Fowler's descriptors within the scope of the stories. His mysterious ways, his charming older sisters, who make not even a cameo appearance but still manage to strike me as characters in their own rights, and Fowler's ability to tie in Austen with each of them, was amazing to say the least.

One of the things I dislike about the books was the chapter "review/synopsis" at then end of each month's meetings. I felt it a bit contrived and ill-placed having to re-hash the plot points and relate them to Austen.

Since I hadn't read much Austen, I had no compunction or expectation that Fowler was going to create characters that were Austen-ite, or even that reflected the characters in the books they discussed. It surprised me to hear other people's disappointments that Fowler had not created a novel that hinged upon these things and annoyed that people cant read something that refers to a literary icon such as Austen without harboring some expectation of the new author.

I have to confess that I was leery of picking this one up. Austen is something I shied away from because of someone else's love for her. She adored Austen, carried the books about with her as she read and re-read them, took classes based solely on the works of Austen, and loved the complexities of the characters. Austen was hers in our friendship, and I was OK with that. And perhaps I knew that that passion would come out, unwittingly, during my own reading of anything Austen-related. And so I thought of her throughout, of how she might reflect on certain turns of phrases, of how each of the characters tackled their own personal demons of love and loss and friendship, and I tried to reconcile myself with the way things had gone in the book of our lives.