The Jane Austen Book Club continues its popularity
Another year-end review of books, this one from the Nashville City Paper, suggests both The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, both about groups of people who read Jane Austen’s novels.
We think this review of JABC from The Star (Malaysia) hits upon one of the reasons why many Janeites expressed dissatisfaction with the book.
I think this story very accurately describes the average book discussion group where more time is spent snacking and gossiping than discussing a book; in which there is always someone who does all the talking and someone who says nothing at all; differing opinions result in sulks and offended silences; and everyone secretly considers herself to be the only one with any real understanding of the book in question.
Some readers possibly expected the book to be about a group of erudite readers having in-depth discussions of Jane’s books, rather than the assembled life stories and modern neuroses of ordinary folks like the Center Valley Jane Austen Book Club. The Editrix, on the other hand, liked the book because it was about ordinary people–just like Jane Austen’s novels. One of the bits of amateur criticism that Jane Austen collected about her books included a comment about Emma that said something like “Too much nature in it to be amusing.” In other words, it was too much like real life!
December 17th, 2004 at 9:09 pm
How do I say this?
I didn’t dislike the book because it didn’t deal with erudite people. I didn’t like any of the characters at all, and it had nothing to do with either a lack of erudition or their degree of “normalness.” I just thought it was a colossal bore. And since, after “Middlemarch,” I decided that life is too short to read books I don’t like, I put this one down less than half way through.