{"id":479,"date":"2008-10-07T22:28:56","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T02:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2010-10-20T23:19:39","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T03:19:39","slug":"the-jane-austen-book-club-by-karen-joy-fowler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I finished The Good German<\/em> over the weekend but I’m waiting to watch the movie before I review it.\u00c2\u00a0 For now, you’ll get a bonus review of The Jane Austen Book Club<\/em> which qualifies as part of the Lit Flicks Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had no intention of watching the movie and when I looked at the cast list last night I knew I wasn’t going to change my mind.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed this book.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the chapters are setup to highlight a character and a Jane Austen book.\u00c2\u00a0 The book club is comprised of six members who take turns hosting the group for discussion accompanied by food and drinks.\u00c2\u00a0 Their comments about the books reveal some of their thoughts and feelings about the others.\u00c2\u00a0 This sounds like it should be chick lit but it’s not; it’s much more than that.<\/p>\n

The narrator is someone we never know or meet but is non-judgemental about the characters.\u00c2\u00a0 Fowler’s narrator meanders through the past and present of the characters in an unobtrusive manner.\u00c2\u00a0 While reading I thought to myself, “There’s no way someone could do flashbacks well enough in a movie to show this without disrupting the present storyline.”<\/p>\n

All of the characters are well rounded and have more to them than what lies on the surface.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the lone male member of the book club gets the same treatment as the female members.\u00c2\u00a0 In short, each gets a chance to shine.\u00c2\u00a0 In this passage near the end of the book, Prudie, a married twenty-eight-year-old member\u00c2\u00a0watches her husband dance with Bernadette, the oldest member at sixty-seven and the most married.<\/p>\n

She turned to look at the dance floor.\u00c2\u00a0 It was night behind the five-story arch of glass; inside, the balconies were strung with chains of lights, now lit like constellations.\u00c2\u00a0 The band was small and distant.\u00c2\u00a0 She saw Dean – tall, handsome, and kind of jerky when he danced, but in a good way.<\/p>\n

Bernadette was rotund, but elastic.\u00c2\u00a0 She had a serious shimmy in her shoulders, loose knees, rocking hips.\u00c2\u00a0 She was sugar-footing one minute, buck-and-winging the next.\u00c2\u00a0 A restrained, ladylike cha-cha.\u00c2\u00a0 It was too bad Dean was out there with her.\u00c2\u00a0 He was obviously holding her back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hopefully that short passage gives you an idea of the book.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m going to put more of Fowler’s books in my TBR pile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finished The Good German over the weekend but I’m waiting to watch the movie before I review it.\u00c2\u00a0 For now, you’ll get a bonus review of The Jane Austen Book Club which qualifies as part of the Lit Flicks Challenge. I had no intention of watching the movie and when I looked at the… Continue reading The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[37,61,62],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-review","tag-challenge","tag-karen-joy-fowler","tag-the-jane-austen-book-club","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2878,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}