![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 8th, 2004 09:07 pm#115
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler
I picked this up after seeing a great many very favorable comments on it. Frankly, although I don't regret reading it, I don't see what the fuss is all about. None of the characters is sufficiently well-drawn to gain either our sympathy or our dislike. They're just there. The device of the book club, reading all of Austen, has no particular relevance to anything that happens; it's rather as though the author just stuck it in to be clever. At the end there are summaries of Austen's novels, as well as comments on her work by friends, family and critics, but there is no particular reason for these to be included.
Fowler does have a way with language ("What a waste those eyelashes were on a man who watched sitcoms."), but it's not enough.
On the whole, I'd rather read Jane.
#116
Fortunes of War, by Mel Keegan
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler
I picked this up after seeing a great many very favorable comments on it. Frankly, although I don't regret reading it, I don't see what the fuss is all about. None of the characters is sufficiently well-drawn to gain either our sympathy or our dislike. They're just there. The device of the book club, reading all of Austen, has no particular relevance to anything that happens; it's rather as though the author just stuck it in to be clever. At the end there are summaries of Austen's novels, as well as comments on her work by friends, family and critics, but there is no particular reason for these to be included.
Fowler does have a way with language ("What a waste those eyelashes were on a man who watched sitcoms."), but it's not enough.
On the whole, I'd rather read Jane.
#116
Fortunes of War, by Mel Keegan
