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The Jane Austen Book Club

Karen Joy Fowler

FOR SEAN PATRICK JAMES TYRRELL.

Missing and forever missed.

Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that

something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

—JANE AUSTEN,Emma

Prologue

Each of us has a private Austen.

Jocelyn’s Austen wrote wonderful novels about love and court-ship, but never married. The book club

was Jocelyn’s idea, and she handpicked the members. She had more ideas in one morn-ing than the rest

of us had in a week, and more energy, too. It was essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly,

Jocelyn said, let her look around. We suspected a hidden agenda, but who would put Jane Austen to an

evil purpose?

Bernadette’s Austen was a comic genius. Her characters, her di-alogue remained genuinely funny, not

like Shakespeare’s jokes, which amused you only because they were Shakespeare’s and you owed him

that.

Bernadette was our oldest member, just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She’d recently announced

that she was, officially, let-ting herself go. “I just don’t look in the mirror anymore,” she’d told us. “I wish

I’d thought of it years ago....

“Like a vampire,” she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires

always managed to look so dapper. It seemed that more of them should look like Bernadette.

Prudie had once seen Bernadette in the supermarket in her bedroom slippers, her hair sticking up from

her forehead as if she hadn’t even combed it. She was buying frozen edamame and capers and other

items that couldn’t have been immediately needed.

Bernadette’s favourite book was Pride and Prejudice; she’d told Jocelyn that it was probably

everyone’s favourite. She recom-mended starting with it. But Sylvia’s husband of thirty-two years had

just asked for a divorce, and Jocelyn would not subject her, the news so recent and tender, to the dishy

Mr. Darcy. “We’ll start with Emma,” Jocelyn had answered. “Because no one has ever read it and

wished to be married.”

Jocelyn met Sylvia when they were both eleven years old; they were in their early fifties now. Sylvia’s

Austen was a daughter, a sister, an aunt. Sylvia’s Austen wrote her books in a busy sitting room, read

them aloud to her family, yet remained an acute and non-partisan observer of people. Sylvia’s Austen

could love and be loved, but it didn’t cloud her vision, blunt her judgment.

It was possible that Sylvia was the whole reason for the book club, that Jocelyn wished only to keep her

occupied during a dif-ficult time. That would be like Jocelyn. Sylvia was her oldest and closest friend.

Wasn’t it Kipling who said, “Nothing like Jane when you’re in a tight spot”? Or something very like that?

I think we should be all women,” Bernadette suggested next. “The dynamic changes with men. They

pontificate rather than communicate. They talk more than their share.”

Jocelyn opened her mouth.

“No one can get a word in,” Bernadette warned her. “Women are too tentative to interrupt, no matter

how long someone has gone on.

Jocelyn cleared her throat.

“Besides, men don’t do book clubs,” Bernadette said. “They see reading as a solitary pleasure. When

they read at all.”

Jocelyn closed her mouth.

Yet the very next person she asked was Grigg, whom we none of us knew. Grigg was a neat,

dark-haired man in his early for-ties. The first thing you noticed about him was his eyelashes, which were

very long and thick. We imagined a lifetime of aunts regretting the waste of those lashes in the face of a

boy.

We’d known Jocelyn long enough to wonder whom Grigg was intended for. Grigg was too young for

some of us, too old for the rest. His inclusion in the club was mystifying.

Those of us who’d known Jocelyn longer had survived multi-ple setups. While they were still in high

school, she’d introduced Sylvia to the boy who would become her husband, and she’d been maid of

honour at the wedding three years after they gradu-ated. This early success had given her a taste for

blood; she’d never recovered. Sylvia and Daniel. Daniel and Sylvia. Thirty-plus years of satisfaction,

though it was, of course, harder to take pleasure in that just now.

Jocelyn had never been married herself, so she had ample time for all sorts of hobbies.

She’d spent fully six months producing suitable young men for Sylvia’s daughter, Allegra, when Allegra

turned nineteen. Now Allegra was thirty, and the fifth person asked to join our book club. Allegra’s

Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she’d worked in a

bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.

Allegra got short, expensive haircuts and wore cheap, sexy shoes, but neither of those facts would have

made any of us think twice if she hadn’t also, on occasions too numerous to count, re-ferred to herself as

a lesbian. Jocelyn’s inability to see what had never been hidden eventually became offensive, and Sylvia

took her aside and asked why she was having so much trouble getting it. Jocelyn was mortified.

She switched to suitable young women. Jocelyn ran a kennel and bred Rhodesian Ridgebacks. The dog

world was, as it hap-pily turned out, awash in suitable young women.

Prudie was the youngest of us at twenty-eight. Her favourite novel was Persuasion, the last completed

and the most sombre. Prudie’s was the Austen whose books changed every time you read them, so that

one year they were all romances and the next you sud-denly noticed Austen’s cool, ironic prose.

Prudie’s was the Austen who died, possibly of Hodgkin’s disease, when she was only forty-one years

old.

Prudie would have liked it if we’d occasionally acknowledged the fact that she’d won her invitation as a

genuine Austen devo-tee, unlike Allegra, who was really there only because of her mother. Not that

Allegra wouldn’t have some valuable insights; Prudie was eager to hear them. Always good to know

what the lesbians were thinking about love and marriage.

Prudie had a dramatic face, deep-set eyes, white, white skin, and shadowed cheeks. A tiny mouth and

lips that almost disap-peared when she smiled, like the Cheshire cat, only opposite. She taught French at

the high school and was the only one of us cur-rently married, unless you counted Sylvia, who soon

wouldn’t be. Or maybe Grigg—we didn’t know about Grigg—but why would Jocelyn have invited him if

he was married?

None of us knew who Grigg’s Austen was.

The six of us—Jocelyn, Bernadette, Sylvia, Allegra, Prudie, and Grigg—made up the full roster of the

Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club. Our first meeting was at Jocelyn’s

house.

March

CHAPTER ONE

in which we gather

at Jocelyn’s

to discussEmma

We sat in a circle on Jocelyn’s screened porch at dusk, drink-ing cold sun tea, surrounded by the smell

of her twelve acres of fresh-mowed California grass. There was a very pretty view. The sunset had been

a spectacular dash of purple, and now the Berryessa mountains were shadowed in the west. Due south in

the springtime, but not the summer, was a stream.

“Just listen to the frogs,” Jocelyn said. We listened. Appar-ently, somewhere beneath the clamour of her

kennel of barking dogs was a chorus of frogs.

She introduced us all to Grigg. He had brought the Gramercy edition of the complete novels, which

suggested that Austen was merely a recent whim. We really could not approve of someone who showed

up with an obviously new book, of someone who had the complete novels on his lap when only Emma

was under discussion. Whenever he first spoke, whatever he said, one of us would have to put him in his

place.

This person would not be Bernadette. Though she’d been the one to request girls only, she had the best

heart in the world; we weren’t surprised that she was making Grigg welcome. “It’s so lovely to see a man

taking an interest in Miss Austen,” she told him. “Delightful to get the male perspective. We’re so pleased

that you’re here.” Bernadette never said anything once if it could be said three times. Sometimes this was

annoying, but mostly it was restful. When she’d arrived, she seemed to have a large bat hanging over her

ear. It was just a leaf, and Jocelyn removed it as they hugged.

Jocelyn had two portable heaters going, and the porch hummed cosily. There were Indian rugs and

Spanish-tile floors of a red that might hide dog hair, depending on the breed. There were porcelain lamps

in the shape of ginger jars, round and Oriental, and with none of the usual dust on the bulbs, because it

was Jocelyn’s house. The lamps were on timers. When it was suffi-ciently dark out, at the perfect

moment, they would snap on all at once like a choir. This hadn’t happened yet, but we were look-ing

forward to it. Maybe someone would be saying something brilliant.

The only wall held a row of photographs—Jocelyn’s dynasty of Ridgebacks, surrounded by their

ribbons and pedigrees. Ridgebacks are a matriarchal breed; it’s one of their many attrac-tive features.

Put Jocelyn in the alpha position and you have the makings of an advanced civilization.

Queenie of the Serengeti looked down on us, doe eyes and troubled, intelligent brow. It’s hard to

capture a dog’s personal-ity in a photograph; dogs suffer more from the flattening than people do, or cats

even. Birds photograph well because their spir-its are so guarded, and anyway, often the real subject is

the tree. But this was a flattering likeness, and Jocelyn had taken it herself.

Beneath Queenie’s picture, her daughter, Sunrise on the Sa-hara, lay, in the flesh, at our feet. She had

only just settled, having spent the first half-hour moving from one of us to the next, puff-ing hot

stagnant-pond smells into our faces, leaving hairs on our pants. She was Jocelyn’s favourite, the only dog

allowed inside, al-though she was not valuable, since she suffered from hyperthy-roidism and had had to

be spayed. It was a shame she wouldn’t have puppies, Jocelyn said, for she had the sweetest disposition.

Jocelyn had recently spent more than two thousand dollars on vet bills for Sahara. We were glad to hear

this; dog breeding, we’d heard, could make a person cruel and calculating. Jocelyn hoped to continue

competing her, though the kennel would de-rive no benefit; it was just that Sahara missed it so. If her gait

could be smoothed out—for Ridgebacks it was all about the gait—she could still show, even if she never

won. (But Sahara knew when she’d lost; she became subdued and reflective. Sometimes some-one was

sleeping with the judge and there was nothing to be done about it.) Sahara’s competitive category was

Sexually Al-tered Bitch.

The barking outside ascended into hysteria. Sahara rose and walked stiffly to the screen door, her ridge

bristling like a tooth-brush.

“Why isn’t Knightley more appealing?” Jocelyn began. “He has so many good qualities. Why don’t I

warm to him?”

We could hardly hear her; she had to repeat herself. The con-ditions were such, really, that we should

have been discussing Jack London.

* * *

Most of what we knew about Jocelyn came from Sylvia. Little Jocelyn Morgan and little Sylvia Sanchez

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