Tuesday, March 15, 2005
The Jane Austen Book Club
I don't actually know Karen Joy Fowler, but we are members of the same organization (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) and know some of the same people. If a disclaimer is necessary, there it is.
The Jane Austem Book Club isn't really about Jane Austen, or even about reading Jane Austen, although the club is at the center of the story and most of the episodes are modeled after the books that the club reads in them. Think of it as an homage to Austen. (A lot of Janeites call her by her first name, much as New Yorkers refer to Woody, but the ladies -- and one man -- in this club take offense at such familiarity.)
And the book has many of the characteristics of the Nineteenth Century novel. There is a series of romantic complications, with roughly predicable results (Trollope, for one, apologizes in one novel -- I think it is The Eustace Diamonds -- for introducing an element that might be a surprise.) No one behaves out of character, and character is the real focus of the story. (I know there are whole other genres of novels in the Nineteenth Century, such as gothic and sensational, but I'm talking about the main line of those books that are still read. No one really reads Mrs. Radcliffe -- besides one of the characters in The Jane Austen Book Club -- and hardly anyone reads Wilkie Collins.)
The book is also informed by the Austenian spirit. It is witty and closely observed, and each character is fully drawn, with a past and present and future all linked by motives public and private.
It does not reach the level of Austen, though. (This is hardly a criticism from someone who considers Austen one of the founding genuises of our craft.) Austen's characters are individuals, yes, but they are people of their time, and by investigating them Austen studies and analyzes her world. The members of the Jane Austen book club are carefully designed to be a cross-section of a particular world -- the woman who has never married, the woman going through a painful divorce, her lesbian daughter, the spinsterish (but married) teacher, the eligible male, the older woman who's had a wild life -- but they don't, for me at least, combine into a portrait of that world. Part of Fowler's problem is, of course, that our world is much bigger than Austen's ever was. She wrote of the rural gentry, and there simply is no such coherent class in modern Sacramento (where the book is set).
Still, I enjoyed the book, and I enjoyed spending time with those people. Fowler shares Austen's clear affection for even the most obnoxious of her characters, and shares that with us. She also enjoys Austen (I find it hard to imagine a serious novelist who doesn't, although I'm sure such must exist) and finding ways that she might fit into our world.
I suspect this may be a book that would reward a more careful reading (I listened to it); at the least, it would be a pleasant way to spend the time.
dmh
The Jane Austem Book Club isn't really about Jane Austen, or even about reading Jane Austen, although the club is at the center of the story and most of the episodes are modeled after the books that the club reads in them. Think of it as an homage to Austen. (A lot of Janeites call her by her first name, much as New Yorkers refer to Woody, but the ladies -- and one man -- in this club take offense at such familiarity.)
And the book has many of the characteristics of the Nineteenth Century novel. There is a series of romantic complications, with roughly predicable results (Trollope, for one, apologizes in one novel -- I think it is The Eustace Diamonds -- for introducing an element that might be a surprise.) No one behaves out of character, and character is the real focus of the story. (I know there are whole other genres of novels in the Nineteenth Century, such as gothic and sensational, but I'm talking about the main line of those books that are still read. No one really reads Mrs. Radcliffe -- besides one of the characters in The Jane Austen Book Club -- and hardly anyone reads Wilkie Collins.)
The book is also informed by the Austenian spirit. It is witty and closely observed, and each character is fully drawn, with a past and present and future all linked by motives public and private.
It does not reach the level of Austen, though. (This is hardly a criticism from someone who considers Austen one of the founding genuises of our craft.) Austen's characters are individuals, yes, but they are people of their time, and by investigating them Austen studies and analyzes her world. The members of the Jane Austen book club are carefully designed to be a cross-section of a particular world -- the woman who has never married, the woman going through a painful divorce, her lesbian daughter, the spinsterish (but married) teacher, the eligible male, the older woman who's had a wild life -- but they don't, for me at least, combine into a portrait of that world. Part of Fowler's problem is, of course, that our world is much bigger than Austen's ever was. She wrote of the rural gentry, and there simply is no such coherent class in modern Sacramento (where the book is set).
Still, I enjoyed the book, and I enjoyed spending time with those people. Fowler shares Austen's clear affection for even the most obnoxious of her characters, and shares that with us. She also enjoys Austen (I find it hard to imagine a serious novelist who doesn't, although I'm sure such must exist) and finding ways that she might fit into our world.
I suspect this may be a book that would reward a more careful reading (I listened to it); at the least, it would be a pleasant way to spend the time.
dmh
