Wednesday
May
25 at 12:30 pm
Moderated
by
Annie Pleshette Murphy
Karen
Joy Fowler
The Jane Austen Book Club
Reading • Talk • Booksigning
Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Karen Joy Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun. Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.
“ This exquisite novel is bigger and more ambitious than it appears. It’s that rare book that reminds us what reading is all about.”
—Patricia T. O’Conner, The New York Times Book Review
“Ms.
Fowler, an original and unexpectedly voiced novelist, takes her own
place among the shining responders. Not just with comments of her own,
though there are some excellent ones, but with the entire playful structure
of her new novel.”
—Richard Eder, The New York Times
“For
those who love a good book, the object of their affection is rarely
the subject of one. But if there was ever an invitation to settle down
with a cup ofEarl Grey and a smart story with literature at its heart,
this is the one.”
—Anita Sama, USA Today
Karen
Joy Fowler, a PEN/Faulkner and Dublin IMPAC nominee, is
the author of The Sweetheart Season, Black Glass: Short Fictions, as
well as Sarah Canary and Sister Noon (available from Plume). The
Jane Austen Book Club was a New York Times Bestseller
in hardcover. She lives in Davis, California.
WORD FOR WORD is a Bryant Park lunchtime series presented in cooperation with Coliseum Books. Notable authors discuss their newest books at the Bryant Park Reading Room, alongside 42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Following the readings, the authors will sign books, for sale on site from Coliseum Books.
In case of rain, this event will be moved to the Coliseum Books Café.