The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

This is a book about a book club. That much is obvious, it's in the title. But this is a very special book club. For throughout the book, as they explore the works of Jane Austen you begin to see that each person in the book club is similar to a Jane Austen Hero or Heroine. The book club starts out as  5 women and 1 man, one for each Austen novel and each month they get together at someone's house to discuss the current book. In many ways this book emulates an Austen novel (and I'm not just saying that because of the title). Will each one find their way and find what they had lost? You'll have to read to find out.

This book...what can I say...I think it's one of my favourites. Especially if you are an Austen fan this is a must read, I was first introduced to it actually by way of the movie, I caught some of it when it was last on TV and I was going through my books to find something for my book club to read and I thought of it. Last time my book club tried to read an Austen novel we all tried to read Persuasion and none of us got very far, you know, life gets in the way of reading and Persuasion isn't an easy read if you're not used to reading classical novels (We've decided to try again and read Watership Down but that's not important). However, The Jane Austen Book Club is a very good segue into reading the actual novels because, through the book club meeting you meet the heroes and heroines of the Austen world and it actually inspired me to break out my Jane Austen box set and read them all.

Especially if you're a fan of Austen, and even if you're not, or have only seen the movies I would heartily recommend this book, it's a wonderful read and, believe it or not, it's given me other titles to try that aren't Austen. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone in a heartbeat, who knows? It might inspire you to get a group of friends together and start a book club.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone's read it or heard of it or whatever but Val McDermid recently wrote a modern retelling of Nothanger Abbey and I'm definitely adding it my summer reading list, while we're on the topic of Austen.