A sublime comedy of contemporary manners, this is the novel Jane Austen might well have written had she lived in twenty-first- century California.
Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Karen Joy Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun.
Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant...
Reviews
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A California book club forms to discuss the novels of Jane Austen--what a promising literary device. As the five women and one man meet to discuss Austen's novels, they inevitably end up revealing intimacies about their own lives. Alas, with its overabundance of detail, the book becomes very like a heavy Celebration cake--so overstuffed with detail that it sags under its own weight. Kimberly Schraf reads with precision and grace, and Fowler's shrewd observations are provocative. But, ultimately, there's just too much to carry the story. L.C. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
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