For 40 days, I am choosing a book from my personal book shelves. It will be a book that is insightful, intriguing, or illuminating about women. I will write why I think this book is a positive one and worth a read. This isn’t advertising for me or to promote any of my friends. It’s simply praise for good books.
Day 4, The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Once a month, a group of five women and one man meet to discuss one of Her Majesty’s novels. The story takes places over six months – March to August, one month for each of Jane Austen’s six published works – while each member studies the assigned book and prepares for the discussion.
The members of the club include a free-spirited leader who is its creator and binding force; a woman shell-shocked by her husband’s desertion; the shell-shocked mother’s daredevil daughter; a frustrated high school English teacher; a single and perfectly satisfied about that dog breeder; and a geeky man who reads science fiction but whose sisters loved Jane Austen.
Why is The Jane Austen Book Club a good read for women? As in real life, and as in Jane Austen’s novels, people don’t live in a vacuum, and life presents challenges and obstacles. We need friends to get through those times. Some of the JABC five-female-and-one-male members are friends when the story begins, but they are all friends when it ends. The group sees one another through a separation, a death, miscommunications, romance gone wrong, romance gone right, some wonderful meals, and a growing appreciation for books you might not ever read if something or someone didn’t push you toward them.
Plus, for lagniappe, there are discussions of Jane Austen’s novels!
Ramona DeFelice Long 
Sounds like a critique group. I’m in one that’s been going for five years!
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It was the book of the month for one of my book clubs some years ago. I remember it was a book we all enjoyed and had a lively discussion about it.
Good choice to read, Ramona.
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Jane Austen fans all, my book group nevertheless missed this one. I’ll have to recommend it.
Thanks for the reminder, Ramona.
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Haven’t read it. Don’t know why. But anything about a frustrated English teacher is a must-read. Like yesterday’s dysfunctional Southern families. As one of my students told me, “We like to read about people like us.”
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As I read your post I recalled the first book club meeting that I ever went to. I was invited to my first-year English professor’s house as a guest to the University Women’s book club meeting that she was hosting. I had already attended three colleges, and I think she was trying to encourage me to stick with it. I’m still very moved by the experience of sitting with room full of women discussing a book. It had a strong influence on my identity that I had no words for back then. Over the years the professor and I made friends. Our husbands made friends. We are still friends and still see each other once or twice a year. A book and a call to read enticed me to a life I had never imagined.
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