The Jane Austen Book Club
by Karen Joy Fowler
A charming and delightful book in which five women, plus one inexplicable man, form a book club for the purpose of rereading all of Jane Austen. Fowler draws the characters with sympathy and quiet elegance. They all discuss books -- mostly, but not exclusively, Jane's books -- all the time, but they do it so naturally and sensibly that nothing seems like a college seminar. As the volume reaches its conclusion, we realize that we've spoken a great deal about Austen, but that Austen was never the point.