Why You Must Immediately Read The Jane Austen Book Club

I’m generally not a big fan of novels about book clubs, for a couple of reasons:

1. Things hardly ever explode, and, when they do, it tends to be meaningful.
2. No steely-eyed bounty hunters navigating the wilds of a post-apocalyptic society.
3. No fart jokes.

However — I just finished The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler, and I think I pretty clearly need to revise my standards. This book has some of the most beautifully-drawn characters I’ve ever encountered, and it lavishes an amazing amount attention on them without ever becoming florid or dull. In fact, you don’t even really notice how involved you are in their lives until suddenly, about halfway through, you realize that you know these people, inside and out. And more than that — you really care about them.

The real clincher, though, for me, came at the very end of the book. There I was, rolling along the downslope of a pleasant denouement, minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when suddenly I arrived at this sentence that just blew me off my feet — absolutely drilled me with an unexpected, inscrutable upwelling of emotion. And I didn’t know why.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon before — it happens to me every so often. I come across some innocuous phrase or snatch of music that has an effect all out of proportion to the thing itself — a short, sharp punch that leaves me gasping for air.

For a long time, this really mystified me. I couldn’t understand why it was happening. But I think I’m maybe starting to figure it out, sort of. My theory: it’s not the moment itself — it’s everything leading up to it. It’s the unveiling of a secret subconscious framework that the story is building, piece by piece, out of the subtleties of a character, the quiet implications of a conversation, the emotional ramifications of some small plot twist. All of it growing quietly below the surface, burgeoning tectonically, until — quite suddenly — it breaks through. And when it does, all of that stored potential energy blasts out at your dumb-ass insensitive clueless conscious mind with the force of a bullet leaving a gun, and just blows it — and you — away.

I think this is what The Jane Austen Book Club does, in its own gentle way: slowly builds an emotional framework beneath the surface of your understanding, and then, with one line, unleashes it all at once. And maybe this is what all good art does: ferries the bulk of its power down the dark avenues of your subconscious. The best writers know how to navigate these shadowy underroads. They know how to get to you in ways that matter.

Which is why I’m not going to mention the line that got me — because, robbed of its context, it’s just sort of cool. And just sort of cool doesn’t really do it justice. So you’ll have to go read the book. And then, when you’re done, you can go watch Bruce Willis blow something up, if you must. I’ll understand.