I've just begun the packing up process as we're moving house and found my copy of The Jane Austen Book Club, I opened it up and before I knew it I'd finished it. There's nothing more satisfying than rereading a beloved favorite.
The Jane Austen Book Club is about relationships and people.

Who they are, how they relate and how who they are, affects others.

As the story unfolds small tragedies and bitter regrets are revealed, heartfelt longing and burning wishes are explained, and each book club meeting offers a delicate glimpse into one of the six main character's crowded minds. Secrets that never have been told and feelings that have never have been said out loud, shape each character and the way they relate. Fowler seems to be showing how the past influences the present. It was very cathartic reading this book, it was a reminder that life is complicated and messy and every generation has similar issues.

The Jane Austen Book Club is a delightful story of how books can have an impact on you, and how a love for reading can be shared.

نقل از کتاب:
"هر کدام از ما جین آستینِ خودمان را داریم.
آستینِ جوسلین رمان های فوق العاده ای در مورد عشق و عاشقی نوشته، اما خودش هرگز ازدواج نکرده است.
آستینِ برنادت یک نابغه ی طناز است.
آستینِ سیلویا می تواند عاشقانه دوست بدارد و دوست داشته شود، اما این عشق جلوی چشم هایش را نمی گیرد و قضاوتش را مخدوش نمی کند.
آستینِ آلگرا در مورد تأثیر مسائل اقتصادی و نیاز مالی بر زندگی عشقی زن ها می نوشت. اگر الگرا در کتابفروشی کار می کرد احتمالاً آستین را در ققسه ی کتاب های ترسناک قرار می داد.
آستین پرودی، آستینی بود که هربار کتاب هایش را می خواندی با قبل فرق داشت، بنابراین یک سال همه ی کتاب هایش عاشقانه بود و سال بعد یک باره متوجه نثر خوشایند و طعنه آمیزش می شدی. "

آستینِ من، شبیه آستینِ پرودی ست. هر بار کتاب هایش را می خوانم با دفعه ی قبل فرق دارد و هر بار بیشتر دوستش دارم.

اما در مورد کتاب:
پنج خانم و یک آقا، قرار می گذارند در شش ماه، شش رمان جین آستین را بخوانند و در موردشان صحبت کنند. با اِما شروع می کنند و با ترغیب تمام. شش فصل دارد. هر فصل علاوه بر جلسات کتابخوانی، در مورد یکی از اعضای باشگاه است؛ همان کسی که قرار است جلسه ی کتابخوانی در خانه اش برگزار شود.
من در مورد کتاب ها، خیلی سخت گیر نیستم. همین که یک متن روان داشته باشد و یک داستان خوب، برایم کافیست. و این کتاب، یک متن روان دارد و شش داستان خوب. ماجرای چندانی در کتاب اتفاق نمی افتد، به همین خاطر شاید زمین گذاشتنش راحت باشد و تمام کردنش سخت، اما شخصیت های جالبی دارد. تنها نقطه ضعف کتاب، جلسات کتابخوانی هستند. وقتی در مورد کتاب ها و شخصیت های آستین صحبت می کردند، سخت بود باور کنم که هر دو یک کتاب را خوانده ایم. شاید به این خاطر که زمان زیادی از آخرین باری که خواندمشان گذشته.
در کل دوستش داشتم.

I like contemporary literary fiction. I really like book clubs. I love Jane Austen. I thought this book would be right up my alley. How could it bore me to tears like that??

Lots of drama about the current lives and loves of the various members of this book club, which has its reflection in the themes of the various Jane Austen novels they read each month. It was mildly interesting, and I finished the book, but it just never really engaged me.

This is a very average story... I was pretty much bored throughout the novel and found it very disapointing for two mains reasons: naively enough, I thought the book would hold many more references to Jane Austen's works when it focusses mainly on the lives of the people attending the book club (who are all very dull). The second reason is that the comments on the book cover are very misleading: "very funny", "I laughed out loud four or five times in the course of the introduction alone"... I obviously don't have the same sense of humour;)

Eeeeegaaaads....

I love Jane Austen, so it's hard to claim I'm not terribly... shall we say... "girlie"? Still, I've not been one to join the bandwagon about such chick flicks that are often described as tear jerkers. I tried this book. Really, I did.

I mean, there’s nothing really wrong with it, the writing is good enough, but I can’t seem to get excited about it in the least bit. It’s a whole 175 pages long, which means I should have gotten through it in a couple of sittings. Instead, I’m still on page 45. I'm pretty much done with it.

The problem is that this is a pretty typical chick flick type of set up. It’s something along the Ya-ya sisterhood of the Travelling Mama Mia that Made the American Quilt. In other words, it’s one of those where women get together over some common hobby and then you spend the time recalling each woman’s story and bonding and whatnot.

As much as I’m sure that everyone has a story, I don’t think that they all make for narrative analysis.

I’m underwhelmed.

*DNF review alert. If you don't think they should exist, do not read this*

Jocelyn and Sylvia, two middle-aged women, one never married and the other crying rivers because she just got divorced; Bernadette, a sixty-seven year-old Liz Taylor; Prudie, a French teacher that shares her thoughts in French whether you speak it or not; Allegra, Sylvia's daughter, a thirty year-old lesbian who cannot get a happy relationship, and Grigg, a guy that... I don't know what to say about this choice. All these people start a Jane Austen book club.

This book starts slow and I don't think its pace ever changes (I couldn't finish this thing; I couldn't find the energy, so I put an end to this weird self-inflicted pain).

While I was reading this book, I couldn't stop thinking that if you are going to write about this outstanding author or her works, without a gram of her wit and fine humor, then please, do not do it. Save a tree and your dignity. Fowler's writing style can't get any drier. Let's be honest, some of these characters, from different points of view, have experienced failure; they might be considered “losers”, though that is a harsh word so let's call them... “non-winners”. My point is, there are clever ways of describing non-winners, however, Fowler picked the dullest ways possible. They lacked development, in my opinion. Funny thing, there are many unnecessary and over-detailed anecdotes that tried to explain some... context?, but they only made me forget about the whole plot (okay, let's imagine there is a plot). So this Daria-on-Valium kind of writing really bored me. And that is a big problem for me because I prefer writing over plot. I can deal with an average plot, but the writing must be good. And this is certainly not the case.

Like I said, all these people are members of a Jane Austen book club, so you could imagine all the witty comments you will read. “No animal passion”, Allegra said about Emma. Really? Just find some Sade Book Club, there's some “animal” for you to enjoy. I found some other very insightful remarks like “Emma is a snob”. Yeah, mind-blowing.
A couple of lines later, I was reading some Jocelyn's story about tennis and yadda yadda yadda. Then, back to the book. And so on. And so on... I was lost. (Cohesion, coherence, connection?) It is a literary technique, sure, but if you are going to use it, you have to be very crafty to pull that off, lady. And again, this is not the case. I was frankly annoyed by all this. And one of my rules in life (that helps me preserve my mental health) is to not force myself to read something I am not enjoying. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, really. So, if by, let's say, page 50, I feel like I couldn't care less about the whole story, then adiós.

Anyway, there is a movie based on this book. It is one of those chick-flicks you can watch on a Sunday afternoon; I didn't like it that much. Feel free to ask, "then why did you read the book?" Because I have read somewhere that the screenplay had little to do with the book. So, I thought it was going to be better.
Poor child! Let's just say that you might want to watch the movie and leave it at that. I found it much more entertaining than the book. Sacrilege, I know, but in this case, it is the sad truth.

Jan 24, 2014
* Also on my blog.

I loved this book so much. The film adaptation is one of my favourite movies of all time, absolutely a comfort movie and a story I can’t get sick of. Truthfully, I feel the movie is better than that book, but I only feel this because the cast brought humour to the characters that wasn’t really delivered in the writing. This was such a wholesome read and I think I’ll have to rewatch the movie again with a large cup of tea and my knitting soon

The author can write, but I didn’t like the stereotypic and needy characters, nor did I care for the story, which was just an excuse to trot out everyone’s dysfunction. It’s almost as if “Jane Austen” in the title is click-bait to induce unsuspecting readers to buy.

Not recommended.

Find all of my reviews at: https://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

I’m not exactly what you’d call a Jane Austen fangirl like the folks in this book club, but I do have a sort of an unhealthy relationship with Pride and Prejudice along with any and all of its gazillions of retellings. So why did it take me so long to read this book? Well, basically it’s all Fern's fault. Have you ever been terrified of reading anything else by an author after having sort of a lifechanging moment with the first thing you read by them and you just can’t imagine their other stuff even being able to hold a candle to the other book’s greatness? Yeah, that’s pretty much what my problem was with this – despite it having a title that pretty much guaranteed the story within would provide at least a modicum of enjoyment for me.

It may have taken years, but I finally decided to nut up and read this out on the deck earlier this year when it wasn’t hot enough to fuse my underwear to my ass. I don’t know what I was scared of. It was exactly what I hoped it would be with characters who I would love know in real life. And while it certainly does not compare to We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves it shouldn’t have to. They are totally different stories that I wouldn’t even categorize in the same genre.

n  n

I kept looking for fairly literal parallels in each chapter between the book under review and the character with which it was associated. Not a very rewarding approach, although I did find some. Instead, I took this book as an implicit homage to Austen. A gently satirical portrayal of a group of characters bound partly, but not entirely, by a love of Austen's novels. It's all about character; not plot. Not that much actually happens during the course of the book. Nevertheless, we learn a lot about this particular group of people and their relationships to each other. By the end of the book, I cared what happened to each of them. Like Austen, Fowler is slyly funny at times, although I found her observations about the shortcomings of her characters to be a lot less pointed than Austen's. Familiarity with Austen's work is marginally useful to an appreciation of this book, but certainly not necessary. The characters and their stories stand on their own as an entertaining read.

I know this book has been received poorly and I understand that the book isn’t really about Jane Austen, which is disappointing. When I first read this book, I was new to reading for pleasure. This book introduced me to Jane Austen, to Philip K Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton, Theodore Sturgeon, Joanna Russ, Arthur C Clark, Connie Wills and more. This book will always have a soft spot in my heart. It introduced me to some amazing work by some very talented writers

‘We all have a sense of level. It may not be based on class exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we're entitled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. The pretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly. To the detriment of the breed.’

I just finished The Jane Austen Book Club. So good. I'm craving Jane Austen now. I just want to go through each novel in order. I just might. I can't decide. I am a quite reliable multi-tasker...

If you love Jane Austen, I think you will really appreciate the book. Even if you don't love Jane Austen, I think you will appreciate the book and maybe come to appreciate Jane Austen more.

It was really good. Four Hello Kittys.

My favorite Jane Austen book is Pride and Prejudice. I heart Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy. I'm dying to hear what any one else's favorite Austen is. She's such a master with characters and keen observer of relationships. I love her.

One of my favorite classes I took in grad school was on Jane Austen. Besides my poetry classes, it's probably the one class I remember quite vividly and am most fond of. I wrote a great paper on Jane Austen paper dolls.

I finished Fowler's novel this evening by our outdoor fireplace. FD got a really perfect fire going; he used some of our applewood we bought last fall from a local orchard. We smell woodsy and wholesome and happy. Very simply happy.

When the fire got low, our neighbor boy Joe, crept between the pines in our backyards, apologized for interrupting my reading and asked if he and his brother could get me more wood. It was really sweet. I thanked him and told him it was sweet, but we were letting it burn out. He crept back between the trees and continued playing. It was such a small act, but it really made my night.

Tonight has been on those nights where everything feels good and perfect and calm. Everything feels full of love and goodness. We had a hearty meal, a glowing fire, fine reading, quiet conversations, good neighbors. It was one of those precious nights that if you don't record it becomes lost in all the hum-drum of the quick days that slide by. It was an evening worthy to share.