A-Z Wednesday: F (9.15.10)

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Vicki at Reading At The Beach. To join in, visit her blog for the guidelines and leave your link in a comment.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: “F”

My book is:

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Synopsis from Amazon:

Fowler, a captivating and good-hearted satirist, exuberantly pays homage to and matches wits with Jane Austen in her most pleasurable novel to date by portraying six irresistible Californians who meet once a month to discuss Austen’s six novels. Coyly shifting points of view, Fowler subtly uses her characters’ responses to Austen as entree into their poignant and often hilarious life stories. The book club is Jocelyn’s idea, a fiftysomething gal who seems to prefer the company of her show dogs to men. She has known Sylvia since grade school, and even used to date Sylvia’s husband, who has abruptly moved out, inspiring their beautiful, accident-prone, lesbian artist daughter, Allegra, to move back in and join the book club along with her mother. Also on board are disheveled and loquacious Bernadette; Prudie, a high-school French teacher; and Grigg, the only man. Fowler shares Austen’s fascination with the power of stories, and explores the same timeless aspects of human behavior that Austen so masterfully dramatizes, while capturing with anthropological acuity and electrifying humor the oddities of our harried world. Fellow Austenites will love Fowler’s fluency in the great novelist’s work; every reader will relish Fowler’s own ebullient comedy of manners, and who knows how many book clubs will be inspired by this charming paean to books and readers.