The Jane Austen Book Club is built around the six-member Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club, organized by Jocelyn, an unapologetic arranger of other people's lives.The six people meet once a month to discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people but over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen and a couple of them even fall in love.
The six Austen novels are the bones of this book. Club members tackle one a month. As we read along, we meet Jocelyn's friends: fiftysomething Sylvia, who is recovering from her husband's midlife decampment; Sylvia's daughter, sensitive Allegra, who is in her own turmoil after a lesbian lover's betrayal; Bernadette, who is 67 going on 17 and is still collecting men; and Prudie, 28, the high school French teacher who has never quite gotten to France. Most intriguing is Grigg, the Knightley/Darcy stand-in, an offbeat 40-ish hero possibly "suitable," in Austenesque parlance, for someone in the group.
