Revisiting Jane Austen

Almost two hundred years separate Karen Joy Fowler from Jane Austen. The Latter is a great English literary icon, author to six of the best treasured novels in English literature, admired for her style, wit and subtlety in the delineation of her characters and their social relations. The former is a contemporary awarded American Sci-fi and Fantasy writer, author to the novel The Jane Austen Book Club, which is the corpus of the present book. In spite of the wide distance in time, subject matter, and even in literary stature that separates them, both authors are deeply involved in the investigation of human nature and human bonds. The Jane Austen Book Club not only pays homage to Jane Austen, it also offers a rich contrast between life as it was, in the 18th century, in Austen's rural England, and as it is now, in Fowler's present-day sunny California. In Fowler's novel we meet six interesting characters who undergo different kinds of personal crises. They form a book club and meet monthly, during half a year to discuss Jane Austen's novels. To approach the contrast between the solid world of Austen and liquid world of Fowler I rely on Zygmunt Bauman ideas.