Book #80 |
Book: The Jane Austen Book Club | Author: Karen Joy Fowlery | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 288 | Duration: 08/30/25 – 08/31/25 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★☆ | Genres: fiction, romance, books about books | ||
| 📕10-word summary: A 5-women and 1-man book club discuss Jane Austen novels. 🖌6-word review: Clever premise; sometimes hard to follow. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “If she’d worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have filed Austen under horror.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: Ridgebacks, shirred | |||
| Description:* In California’s central valley, 5 women and 1 man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the 6 months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships. Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I didn’t realize the structure of this novel, which was that 6 people meet monthly to discuss one Jane Austen novel and that the members use the novels they’re currently reading to understand and reflect on their own complicated relationships. I spent too much time while reading this thinking, “Now who is this speaking?” I don’t generally re-read books, but this is one I’d be interested in re-reading knowing what I now know about it. A coincidental thing about it is that the previous book I read, The Memory Library, had Jane Austen’s book, Persuasion (which I’d never heard of) as a germane element of it, as does this book! I guess that’s a sign that I should read it. On the disappointing side, my pet peeve, overused word, conspiratorially, was used three times in this hoity-toity book. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
