The Jane Austen Book Club

I like this book. I like it very much. It could fall apart I suppose, but it is quirky, it is holding my interest and it is making me think. First about Emma because that is the book the book club focuses on in the first session ( March -how about that?) but in which we mainly meet the cast of 6 book club characters through the very acerbic "group" narrator and we get some of Jocelyn's and Sylvia's back stories.

I like Fowler's style. There's something very, I don't know, surprising about her prose. She'll be describing something and then throw in something unexpected. Sample:

There were porcelain lamps in the shape of ginger jars, round and oriental and with none of the usual dust on the bulbs because this was Jocelyn's house. The lamps were on timers. When it was sufficiently dark out, at the perfect moment they would snap on all at once like a choir. This hadn't happened yet but we were looking forward to it. Maybe someone would be saying something brilliant.

She can be very funny.
"I think Jane is being ironic here", Prudie suggested..."she has an ironic wit, I think some readers miss that. I am often ironic myself., especially in e-mail. Sometimes my friends ask. Was that a joke?"
"Was that a joke?" Allegra asked. ...

Then further on Jocelyn says "The pretty marry the pretty the ugly marry the ugly...to the detriment of the breed."
"Is that a joke?" Prudie asked

The book is set in California somewhere I believe but the author quotes Robertson Davies. Is there a Canadian connection?

Jocelyn and her dogs, Emma cf dog show Interesting. Nobility and wealth, money and breeding.

I have started April/ Sense and Sensibility but will leave thoughts on that for a later date.