From Book to Movie, Part II: A Review of The Jane Austen Book Club

The Jane Austen Book Club
Book: A-
Movie: B

How much fun is this?  A whole book about women who love to read Jane Austen--a book filled with coy plot allusions, character references, settings and themes.  What's more, it's a book that's filled with humor and hilarity.  Fowler--dare I say this?--is almost as observant about the foibles of human nature as Austen herself.  If I weren't getting enough of an Austen fix this year from the all-Jane-all-the-time marathon on Masterpiece, Fowler's book would be a happy alternative supplier of Austen's crackest crack.

And--the fun abounds!--the movie is strong too.  My husband, who had not read the book (and who, I am sorry to admit, has read no Austen at all, though he has so few other serious faults that one might overlook this), enjoyed it thoroughly.  It's a movie that is a party in its own right, and I would see it again, despite the fact that so many interesting subplots had to be cut to shrink the book to a filmable length.

Of course, much of the fun in the book is the slyness of Fowler’s emulations of the six Austen plots in the lives of her six characters.  You realize fairly early on that Jocelyn is the efficient and matchmaking Emma, but it takes more time to understand that Sylvia’s decorous restraint makes her a dead ringer for Elinor Dashwood.  Grigg’s childhood experience of being near-abandoned at a strange castle run perfect counter to Catherine Morland’s fanciful dread of Northanger Abbey.  I loved the book’s wily use of Austen’s plots and characters.

And then there is the book’s delicious back matter, absent of course from the movie.  Fowler has more appendices than the trio of endings to Return of the King, including, most entertainingly, a chronology of reviews and comments about Austen from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present.  Austenites can puff up with righteous indignation at Mark Twain’s infuriating comment that he would like to dig up Austen’s shin bone and smack her skull with it (!), or Sir Walter Scott’s scathing, patronizing review of Emma.  (Scott later changed his tune.)  And we can all cheer at E.M. Forster’s confession that he was “slightly imbecile about Jane Austen,” who was his favorite author.  I always knew there was a reason I liked Forster.

Also great fun are the discussion questions for book clubs, brilliantly presented in each character’s voice.  (“In The Jane Austen Book Club, I take two falls and visit two hospitals,” writes Allegra.  “Did you stop to wonder how a woman who supports herself making jewelry affords health insurance?  Do you think we will ever have universal health care in this country?”) Definitely worth checking out.

In short, this one is a winner either way.  The book is better than the movie--though as we've already said, that's an almost universal rule--but the movie is awfully amusing on its own, with great comedy, strong performances, and the obligatory Austenish happy ending.

Comments

[Susan]

jana!

saw this on your recommendation -- it was really and truly sweet. nice to see mark blucas stretching is wings (poor riley...) off to read the book next!

thanks!

xo susan