The Jane Austen Book Club isn’t a reimagining of one of Jane Austen’s novels. Instead, it’s the story of a book club which reads and discusses the novels, and the members of the club–their back stories, current situations, and relationships. Each chapter focuses on one of the members and correlates (mostly quite loosely) with the plot of the book they’re currently reading.

It’s a clever, playful story, and more than a bit odd. The authorial voice slips in and out of the first person plural, a sort of collective book club consciousness, which can be amusing, is often judgmental, and is at times annoyingly intrusive to the story. The book club discussions themselves are surprisingly shallow and uninteresting, although the individual characters’ backgrounds, told through flashbacks, are really quite well done. I found some of the plot lines a bit unconvincing, although I will not spoil them–read and judge for yourself.

I appreciated the tribute to Ursula LeGuin, a favorite of the one male member of the club. And I enjoyed the compendium of Jane Austen commentary by other well-known authors at the end, as well as the book club questions written as a spoof by the book’s characters themselves. (The author’s summaries of the novels, also included after the narrative, are overly simplistic and not entirely accurate–if you are looking for the actual Austen plots, do go right to the source and read the actual novels.)

So…in summation, strong on (sometimes unlikable) characters, weak on plot, self-referential, with an overlay of Jane Austen: whether this combination is exquisite or dismal depends entirely on your tastes. Personally, I found it equal parts engaging and frustrating. Also, a warning to potential readers: unlike any of the work of Jane Austen, this novel is explicit regarding sexual situations, and also includes offensive language pertaining to the intellectually disabled (perhaps it was not so offensive in 2004–it is rather jarring to come across now).

NOVEL: The Jane Austen Book Club

AUTHOR: Karen Joy Fowler

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2004

IMAGE: Book cover, Penguin Random House