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Nov 22, 2016ArapahoeSteffen rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
So the movie they made about this book is probably on my top ten list of the entertaining movies ever. It is full of bizarre scenes and six weird characters, who form a Jane Austen book club and then comfort and roll their eyes at each other as well as say things like, "The world is an English Village!!" with genuine emotion. I highly encourage everyone to see this movie. Frankie hates it. BUT I had never read the book. Turns out the book is like 5 times as bizarre as the movie. I instantly understood where all the bizarre lines from the movie came from because the book is well written but literally CHOCK-FULL of bizarre sentences and bizarre details and bizarre backstory. It's as if the author is in a writer's workshop where the other members are unable to tell her to edit or remove but in fact encourage her to include the strangest details that come into her wacky head. Almost every paragraph has a sentence that made me laugh out loud, even as I was simultaneously nodding my head in agreement with sentiments like - "It takes ten weeks to get into shape, and ten days to get out of it." The movie is full of sentences like that, and halfway through the book I began highlighting my favorites. I plan to mail this book to a dear friend of mine and hope she highlights her favorites and then mails it back to me. Maybe we can do this once a year for the rest of our lives. I also ran out and bought two copies for my mom and another friend. This is the kind of book you can recommend with the genuine enthusiasm it's main characters feel about dear old Jane" Here is a description of another book written by Karen Joy Fowler, the author: "Coming of age in middle America, eighteen-year-old Rosemary evaluates how her entire youth was defined by the presence and forced removal of an endearing chimpanzee who was secretly regarded as a family member and who Rosemary loved as a sister." I swear this is a sentence-turned-book from the Jane Austen Book Club.