The Jane Austen Book Club - Discussion Primer
Welcome to the first discussion of the Ravenous Readers Online Book Club. It seems fitting that we would begin with a book about a book club*. So, I assume that you all have read the book. I will be giving away the ending, so:
WARNING: If you haven’t read/finished The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler – and you want to do so without knowing the ending – do not read any further!
(This has been a public service announcement to all of you on the internets who might accidentally come across this page before you read the book. It has been brought to you by the goodness in my heart. On with the discussion!)
So, let me sum this puppy up. Our cast of characters:
Jocelyn – Founder of the club. Childhood friend of Sylvia. Single. Matchmaker.
Bernadette – Crazy old lady.
Sylvia – Separated from husband (Daniel, who was originally Jocelyn’s boyfriend). Mother of Allegra.
Allegra – Lesbian. Single but pining for her crummy girlfriend. Club’s “Devil’s Advocate.”
Prudie – A young-married. Occasionally question’s her decision to marry her husband.
Grigg – Token Male. Only new-comer to Austen.
I intentionally left out that Jocelyn is a dog breeder. In the beginning I thought it would be important to the story, but I don’t think it was.
Jocelyn (isn’t that a great name?) forms the club as support for Sylvia whose husband has left her. Grigg is invited into the club because Jocelyn sees him for Sylvia. This might have even been the reason to form the club, as it would have been impossible for Jocelyn to convince Sylvia to go on a date with Grigg. I digress; this is merely my speculation.
Well, the club is formed and, well, nothing much really happens. We get a chance to learn about the characters - though just as a character gets really interesting the author moves on to someone else - and appreciate that each “has a private Austen” that colors their interpretation of the book that the group is reading. This seemed, to me, very much an exercise in character development. I felt an understanding for each character, but other than Sylvia getting back together with Daniel and Jocelyn and Grigg hooking up, not much happened. Yes, Prudie’s mother died, but that didn’t add much to the story other than making Prudie absent for a time. Allegra got back together with Corrine at the very end, but you can tell that’s not going to work out (and honestly, I wouldn’t want it to).
So, that’s it in a nutshell. I know it kind of sounds like I hated this book. I didn’t hate it; I just didn’t love it like I thought I might. Is this perhaps because I’ve not read Austen? I didn’t feel a real kinship with the characters that I really think you are supposed to if you are an Austen fan. It also doesn’t make me want to run out and read Austen.
One observation that I would like to make before getting into the actual discussion of the book: it seems that after reading the synopsis of Austen’s books that each of the main character’s in the JABC corresponds with a beloved Austen character. Austen lovers: did you find this to be true (If this was an obtuse observation, please excuse my lack of knowledge!)? My list of corresponding characters went like this:
Jocelyn = Emma
Grigg = Knightly
Allegra = Marianne
Sylvia = Elinor
Daniel = was he John, Edward, or a combination?
Prudie = Fanny
Bernadette = Catherine (perhaps?)
Also, the whole Jocelyn/Daniel/Sylvia/Tony swap seems reminiscent of the love issues in Mansfield Park. I’m sure I missed lots of other references. Please feel free to point them out.
One other thing: Who the hell was narrating this book? I really have no idea as it doesn’t seem to be any of the characters, but much of the novel was written in first person so I was a little – okay, a lot - confused.
Please share some initial comments about the book before I post any questions!
* There is a great book about a book club called Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons by Lorna Landvik that is totally worth a read.
WARNING: If you haven’t read/finished The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler – and you want to do so without knowing the ending – do not read any further!
(This has been a public service announcement to all of you on the internets who might accidentally come across this page before you read the book. It has been brought to you by the goodness in my heart. On with the discussion!)
So, let me sum this puppy up. Our cast of characters:
Jocelyn – Founder of the club. Childhood friend of Sylvia. Single. Matchmaker.
Bernadette – Crazy old lady.
Sylvia – Separated from husband (Daniel, who was originally Jocelyn’s boyfriend). Mother of Allegra.
Allegra – Lesbian. Single but pining for her crummy girlfriend. Club’s “Devil’s Advocate.”
Prudie – A young-married. Occasionally question’s her decision to marry her husband.
Grigg – Token Male. Only new-comer to Austen.
I intentionally left out that Jocelyn is a dog breeder. In the beginning I thought it would be important to the story, but I don’t think it was.
Jocelyn (isn’t that a great name?) forms the club as support for Sylvia whose husband has left her. Grigg is invited into the club because Jocelyn sees him for Sylvia. This might have even been the reason to form the club, as it would have been impossible for Jocelyn to convince Sylvia to go on a date with Grigg. I digress; this is merely my speculation.
Well, the club is formed and, well, nothing much really happens. We get a chance to learn about the characters - though just as a character gets really interesting the author moves on to someone else - and appreciate that each “has a private Austen” that colors their interpretation of the book that the group is reading. This seemed, to me, very much an exercise in character development. I felt an understanding for each character, but other than Sylvia getting back together with Daniel and Jocelyn and Grigg hooking up, not much happened. Yes, Prudie’s mother died, but that didn’t add much to the story other than making Prudie absent for a time. Allegra got back together with Corrine at the very end, but you can tell that’s not going to work out (and honestly, I wouldn’t want it to).
So, that’s it in a nutshell. I know it kind of sounds like I hated this book. I didn’t hate it; I just didn’t love it like I thought I might. Is this perhaps because I’ve not read Austen? I didn’t feel a real kinship with the characters that I really think you are supposed to if you are an Austen fan. It also doesn’t make me want to run out and read Austen.
One observation that I would like to make before getting into the actual discussion of the book: it seems that after reading the synopsis of Austen’s books that each of the main character’s in the JABC corresponds with a beloved Austen character. Austen lovers: did you find this to be true (If this was an obtuse observation, please excuse my lack of knowledge!)? My list of corresponding characters went like this:
Jocelyn = Emma
Grigg = Knightly
Allegra = Marianne
Sylvia = Elinor
Daniel = was he John, Edward, or a combination?
Prudie = Fanny
Bernadette = Catherine (perhaps?)
Also, the whole Jocelyn/Daniel/Sylvia/Tony swap seems reminiscent of the love issues in Mansfield Park. I’m sure I missed lots of other references. Please feel free to point them out.
One other thing: Who the hell was narrating this book? I really have no idea as it doesn’t seem to be any of the characters, but much of the novel was written in first person so I was a little – okay, a lot - confused.
Please share some initial comments about the book before I post any questions!
* There is a great book about a book club called Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons by Lorna Landvik that is totally worth a read.
posted by MamaChristy at
6:29 PM
9 Comments:
OK, I'm about to run out the door, so I will be uber-quick.
I am not an Austen fanatic like some people, but I have read selected works. She, much like Fowler, has a lot of internal development of characters, but not a lot happens. It's very much a novel of manners, of customs, of inner lives. And, when things do happen -- Prudie's mom dying for instance, or Elizabeth's sister running off with a man, or Corrinw cheating on Allegra, or Emma's friends hooking up -- it's all almost secondary to the story. The action, the drama is all background.
Austen has been praised for telling what many critics call "womanly stories." Chick lit at its first conception, if you will.Do y'all think that's fair? Sometimes it kind of irks me that there's a stereotype that we, as women, care more about manners and feelings then actions and deeds. But, in truth, I probably do feel that way.
(That's very Austen-ish of me to not know for sure how i feel without validation. horrors!)
These are not action adventure Indiana Jones romps, though all that stuff goes on -- it's just all in the background. And Austen's work -- much liek Fowler's -- can easily be transcribed into a play. Limited settings, limited props. Lots of talk. Lots of deliberation. Prob. why so many of her works become movies.
I have notes on this scattered throughout the book so will offer more later, but am running to a meeting now. Just wanted to chime in. Yes, I think the connections between the characters in the JABC and in many of Austen's works were as you believed them to be. I didn't pick up on all of them, but I bet you're right. I'm sure that was her goal.
Has everyone seen the 'Pride and Prejudice' that's in theatres now?
More later ... Thanks for getting us started, MamaC!
By
JenniNapa, at 12:32 PM
Chick lit: Yes, I agree with you Jenni – action was all background noise, the whole story was character development. But you get a sense of the people from the inside out. It’s different, but I liked it.
I think the stereotype fits for the most part. I mean when my husband’s friends come over their conversations consist of football and whatever’s on TV. My girlfriends come over and we’re sitting on the deck with glasses of wine talking about our inner-most thoughts. Crap, am I just adding to the stereotype? Can I help it that women tend to me more…hmm, what’s the word…I don’t know…“internal” is the first thing coming to mind? Guess the stereotype is really more a strike towards men. What can I say – Austen had it goin’ on.
Ok, back to the book:
I have pretty much read ZERO Austen. Well, I read Pride & Prejudice in high school, but I definitely dragged myself through it and to be honest I barely remember the storyline. Meant to see the movie, but haven’t gotten around to it.
My favorite character – Bernadette. I was sitting on the couch cracking up over the description of her glasses being held together with paperclips and tape. Mostly because MY expensive (and brand new) prescription sunglasses were sitting on the table beside me - held together with electrical tape (I just can’t bring myself to spend the money to get new ones when $2 tape works just fine!). Plus the part where she was sitting there eating with food spilled all down her yoga pants – what a riot! She’s like this hip old lady who couldn’t care less what other people thought of her – she just does her own thing. I love her!
I really liked the relationship between Jocelyn and Sylvia. They just seem to love each other the way best friends should. Jocelyn tried to hate Daniel (even though they’re close too) because of what he did to Sylvia. Of course she didn’t REALLY hate him, but she tried. That’s what best friends are for. Plus the part where Jocelyn’s about ready to rip Grigg’s head off for making them late to the dinner – she says she just wants to be there for Sylvia. Very sweet.
I kind of thought Joycelyn’s dog breeding (while not important to the story at all – other than that’s how she met Grigg) was simply more character development for her. She’s this kind of controlling person (not in a bad way, necessarily), but she seems to live through other people. She likes her own life very neat and tiny – her house is spotless – light bulbs dusted. I can’t find it in the book, but isn’t she the one that makes all the lists (I’m now confusing myself). I thought of her dogs as this tiny little world that she created and controlled.
Did I read too much into that? Hey, sometimes a white cat is just a white cat.
I kept imagining Jocelyn with all these little worlds inside snow-globes (The Dog World Snow Globe, The Sylvia/Grigg Snow Globe) and setting them on her shelf to dust around – she can peek in, but they’re behind glass and contained away from her. That sounds weird, but that’s what I kept picturing.
I’m with you Christy – the narrating was confusing. I thought it distracted from the story. I’d be reading along and then…wham – who the heck is this now? It was very strange.
What does everybody think about Sylvia & Daniel getting back together? Ok, he was a total jerk, but there was a part of me that thought him coming back was kind of romantic. Don’t get me wrong – if MY husband did that you’d read about me in the papers. But I had a hard time hating him like I should have.
There was a part somewhere in the book (wow, I didn’t take good notes like I THOUGHT I did), but they talked about the good guys vs. the bad guys in Austen books and how they’re hard to hate (I can’t find it!). Was this another Austen trick?
By
K-Pax, at 2:33 PM
Perhaps I'm not a fan of "womanly stories" if I need a little more action and a little less cerebral thinking? Even in the character development, I was left wanting some, though. Just when someone got interesting - like Bernadette - they were dropped and I wanted more. Usually I like character-study type books, but I think that there were really too many characters (or too few pages?) to really get to know anyone well enough.
Kristie - Interesting take on Jocelyn's dog breeding. I think you hit the nail on the head. "Hey, sometimes a white cat is just a white cat." *smile*
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MamaChristy, at 6:11 PM
No, I'm with you - I like a book with a little action. I can get boring character development in real life. haha. :)
I agree, you really don't get to know the characters that well. You get a nice taste and then Fowler has you on to the next one.
By
K-Pax, at 2:29 PM
Okay, my week was a bit crazy, but I promise I will answer all of the questions posted and participate fully this weekend! :)
By
Twanna A. Hines | FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, at 5:36 AM
It took me a while to "get into the story"... similiar to mammac, I found no rhythmn in the writing... that was very distracting. However after I got used to her writing style it went better- kind of like a drummer who is hearing a different beat than I am, but then the light bulb goes off and I "get it".
I started out disliking this book ALOT - which for me is amazing, there are very few books that I can say that about; by the end I was hooked and I can say that I will probably read it again.
The best part of reading the book were little gems scattered through out the book. These gems were not about character development, the story line or any of that..the following lines resulted in a physical reaction, laughter at Elmer Fudd, grimace at the taste and smile and serenity at the beach:
"A cartoon boice, young Elmer Fudd..." page 174
"I once bit the end of a thermometer jsut to see if I could" page 183
"The tide had left the graceful curves of its going etched into the sand" page 227. This was my favorite line in the book, I love the beach and this was such a visual line for me I paused and read it many times before moving on.
More later...
By
E, at 9:31 AM
So, I read Christy's questions and have been letting them simmer, and I found something interesting.
For a book that I've been praising for character development, I don't remember a lot about the characters.
Is anyone else having this phenomenon?
I read this around the 16th or so of the month, so it's been about two weeks since I read it, but I read several other books in February -- including P&P -- and I remember all of those characters much more clearly. I'm sitting down now to answer the discussion questions and finding myself re-reading bc so much of what happened -- both in terms of action and characters -- has flown from my mind. And, yet, I liked the book. Not quite sure what to make of that.
Select responses:
* I think the narrator was Bernadette. I don't know why I think that. Since it was, after all, omniscient, I guess none of the six members could have been the narrator. But for some reason, when I was reading Bernadette's section, I remember thinking, "Oh, of course, she's the narrator!" Let me re-read and see if I remember why I thought that. Maybe bc she's the least concerned with what people think, as KPax pointed out -- and everyone in Austen cares deeply about what everyone else thinks -- just as our other JABC characters do. Also, because we know Berndatte has this wild imagination ... I wondered if maybe she (Berndatte/Fowler)decided to write a book about a book club and make up all these back stories by cribbing from Austen books. In other words, just like how I have these images of your lives from what you write in our book club, Bernadatte made up these images of other people's lives from what they did/said -- and then wrote a book about it. So one day I might write a book called "The RR Book CLub" with vignettes on each of your lives as contrasted with something we read -- and it would all be a product of my fertile imagination. Oooo -- watch out!
* I, too, thought the dog-breeder thing was significant, but I wonder if it was a trick about social standing, a la Austen. In other words, we didn't think it was signifcant that nPrudie was a teacher or Grigg was a computer guy, because those are "normal" jobs in today's world. But how many of us know a dog breeder? I think Fowler may have been trying to skew us with our own snobberies ... not that there's anything unacceptable about being a dog breeder, just that we (as oh-so-smart readers) would think it was important bc it was unusual, and think we were on to her trick. When, in fact, her trick was that it wasn't important, other than making us ask why should we be trying to judge/classify a person by what they do for a living -- which is what readers criticize Austen's characters for. Does that make sense? Its very unimportance is the importance about us as readers -- and how much we all have in common withAusten characters.
Kind of like how Hitchcock always had a Macguffin that was falsely important -- but not really.
I may be stretching too hard. (:
A white cat etc. etc.
* I don't know what I thought about the Sylvia/Daniel reunion. Like kristie said, i was more interested in the split's affect on the friendship of J and S, than the relationship itself. KP -- I do remember that line too about bad guys. I'll see if I can find it.
OK, I'm going to go tackle a question or two! ET -- I loved that ocean line , and I think I missed it in the book! Thanks for pointing it out; that is VERY evocative and poetic.
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JenniNapa, at 1:19 PM
Wait, wait wait!! The weekend isn't over yet, is it? When I said that I "promised" to answer these questions the weekend, I totally forgot that the Oscars were this weekend. So, needless to say, my weekend was eaten up by the festivities.
I apologize.
Okay, I've read that book but I haven't read or answered the MamaChristy's questions yet. (I'm reading and responding to the posts from the bottom up.) To join in on the discussion, here are my comments about what everyone else has said here ...
MamaChristy: Whew! I'd glad to hear that you were left "wanting something more" from the book because it gives me the courage that I need to say the following: I really didn't like this book but, then again, I never thought that I would. Does that make me a horrible person?!?! :( When I saw that this book had been selected as our read, I looked at my laptop screen in horror, grabbed the side of my face and yelled "noooo!" :) Okay, okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration ... but, it's true that I didn't vote for the book.
I very rarely read fiction. It doesn't have the same appeal that non-fiction does for me. I usually struggle to relate to the characters because, well, they aren't even real. Therefore, when I do fiction, I find that it's usually because the storyline was phenomenal or the characters really suck you in (Memoirs of a Geisha, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Life of Pi, Confessions of a Shopaholic, etc.) Fowler's book had neither the phenomenal characters nor the suck-you-in characters. Nothing really happens in the book and the characters are pretty flat. There are details thrown in here and there (the stories about Sylvia & Jocelyn's childhoods were interesting), but I got the feeling that Fowler was trying too hard.
Having said all of this, I was excited to read the JABC because of, well, this book club. It's something new, and it will be fun to experience the books through each of others lives given that our lives are all very different. I can't wait to see what everyone else thought of it.
JenniNapa Chick lit? Definitely!! I can honestly say that I can't imagine any of my male friends reading the JABC. Random thought ... By the way, you asked: how many of us know a dog breeder? I do. I used to live with one when I was in England and I recently went to the Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden here in New York a couple weeks ago. Therefore, because Fowler writes we believed this and we all thought that, but there is no clear narrator ... I pretended that the dogs were telling us all the story. Like, when Sylvia arranged that beach (the one right before she gets the letter from Daniel)? All about the dogs. :) ... Though, oddly enough, even the dogs are mentioned in 3rd person.
k-pax: You mention that you’ve "pretty much read ZERO Austen." I'm in the same boat with you. In high school, we read Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Great Gastby, A Farewell to Arms and others. This book did little to endear me to Austen, but I must admit that I enjoyed learning what the books were about. And, Fowler did a good job of winding the characters' personal stories into the threads of her own novel. I thought that was pretty clever.
ET: I am glad that you liked the book; it will be refreshing to re-read the book through your eyes. Who knows, I might be converted. I can't wait to read your answers to the posts above.
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Twanna A. Hines | FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, at 5:17 AM
Don't worry about time getting away from you, Stolie. This was kind of what I was excited about for an online book club. No one ever says "It's late; I have to get home" and leave a conversation that they are enjoying. We have a month (or more if we want it!) to talk about this, digest it, think it through. Take your time and have fun with it.
Ohh, I never thought about the dogs being the narrator! Perhaps it isn't all the dogs but just one of them that thinks of herself (you know the narrator is a woman) as a person? Or, perhaps we are supposed to think that Fowler herself is the narrator. That she felt connected to the characters enough to think of herself as part of their group but she also had the insight into what characters didn't tell the group. Hmmm.
By
MamaChristy, at 10:25 AM
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