The Jane Austen Society: A Novel

By Natalie Jenner

* INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER *

"This novel delivers sweet, smart escapism." —People

"Fans of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will adore The Jane Austen Society… A charming and memorable debut, which reminds us of the universal language of literature and the power of books to unite and heal." —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris

Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.

A powerful and moving novel that explores the tragedies and triumphs of life, both large and small, and the universal humanity in us all, Natalie Jenner's The Jane Austen Society is destined to resonate with readers for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250248725

Natalie Jenner

NATALIE JENNER is the author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls. A Goodreads Choice Award runner-up for historical fiction and finalist for best debut novel, The Jane Austen Society was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller, and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie has been a corporate lawyer, career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs. Visit her website to learn more.

Book preview

Chapter One

Chawton, Hampshire

June 1932

He lay back on the low stone wall, knees pulled up, and stretched out his spine against the rock. The birdsong pierced the early-morning air in little shrieks that hammered at his very skull. Lying there, still, face turned flat upwards to the sky, he could feel death all around him in the small church graveyard. He must have looked like an effigy himself, resting on top of the wall, as if carved into permanent silence, abreast a silent tomb. He had never left his small village to see the great cathedrals of his country, but he knew from books how the sculpted ancient rulers lay just like this, atop their elevated shrines, for lower men like himself to gaze at centuries later in awe.

It was haying season, and he had left his wagon in the lane, right where it met the kissing gate and the farm fields at the end of old Gosport Road. Huge bundles of hay had already been piled up high on the back of the wagon, waiting for transport to the horse and dairy farms that dotted the outer vicinity of the village, stretching in a row from Alton to East Tisted. As he lay there, he could feel the back of his shirt, damp from sweat, even though the sun was pale and barely trying; at just nine in the morning he had already been hard at work in the fields for several hours.

The multitude of finches, robins, and tits suddenly quieted down as if on command, and he closed his eyes. His dog had been on guard until that moment, looking out over the mossy stone wall at the sheep that dotted the fields below, just past the hidden ha-ha that marked the perimeter of the estate. But as the farmer’s laboured breath became deep and rhythmic with sleep, the dog took his own cue and lay down beneath his master in the cool dirt of the graveyard.

Excuse me.

He jolted awake at the voice now resonant above him. A lady’s voice. An American voice.

Sitting up, he swung his legs down from the stone wall to stand before her. He looked at her face quickly, glanced at the rest of her, then just as quickly looked away.

She appeared to be quite young, no older than her early twenties. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with an indigo-blue ribbon tied about it that matched the deep blue of her tailored dress. She looked quite tall, almost the same height as him, until he realized she was wearing the highest pair of heels he had ever seen. In one hand she held a small pamphlet, in the other a black clutch purse—and around her neck hung a tiny cross on a short silver chain.

I’m so sorry to disturb you, but you’re the first person I’ve met all morning. And I’m quite lost, you see.

As a lifelong resident of Chawton, population 377, the man was not surprised. He was always one of the first villagers up and about in the morning, right behind the milkman, Dr. Gray on his more pressing rounds, and the postman doing his pickup from the local office.

You see, she repeated, starting to adjust to his natural reticence, I came down for the day from London—I took the train out here from Winchester to see the home of the writer Jane Austen. But I can’t find it, and I saw this little parish church from the road and decided to have a look around. To find some trace of her if I could.

The man looked behind his right shoulder at the church, the same church he had attended all his life, made of local flint and red sandstone and sheltered by beech and elm trees. It had been rebuilt a few generations ago—nothing notable was left inside of Jane Austen or her immediate family.

He turned and looked back now over his left shoulder, at the small stile at the rear of the churchyard, through which one could just glimpse towering yew hedges clipped into circular cones. Even as a boy they had looked to him like nothing so much as extremely large salt and pepper cellars. The hedges ran along the south terrace garden of an imposing Elizabethan house set on an incline, with a gabled tiled roof, red brickwork, and a three-story Tudor porch covered in vines.

The big house is back there, he said abruptly, just past the church. The Great House, it’s called. Where the Knight family lives. Miss Austen’s mother and sister’s graves are right here—do you see, miss, alongside the church wall?

Her face lit up in gratitude, both for the information and for his slow warming to the conversation.

Oh my goodness, I had no idea.…

Then her eyes began to well up. She was the most striking human being he had ever met, like a model in a hair or soap advertisement in the papers. As the tears started, the colour of her eyes crystallized into something he had never before seen, a shade of blue almost like violet, while the tears caught on rows of inky-black lashes, blacker even than her hair.

Looking away, he tried to step around her carefully, his dog, Rider, now nipping about at his muddy boots. He walked over until he was standing next to the two large slabs of stone that stood upright in the ground. She followed him, the heels of her black pumps sticking a bit in the graveyard dirt, and he watched as she silently mouthed the words carved onto the twin tombstones.

Backing away, he fiddled about to find his cap from his pocket. Brushing back the lock of light blond hair that tended to fall across his brow as he worked, he tucked it up under the rim of the cap as he pulled it forward and down over his eyes. He wanted to be away from her now, from the strange emotion being stirred up in her by the unadorned graves of simple women dead these past one hundred years.

Off he wandered to wait with Rider by the main lych gate to the churchyard. After several minutes she finally appeared from around the corner of the church, this time stopping to read the inscription of every stone she passed, as if hoping to discover even more slumbering souls of note. Every so often she would teeter a bit as her heel caught the edge of a stone, and she would grimace just so slightly at her own clumsiness. But her eyes never left the graves below.

She stopped at the lych gate next to him and looked back with a contented sigh. She was smiling now and more composed—so composed that he finally picked up the whiff of money in both her poise and her manners.

I’m so sorry about that, I just wasn’t prepared. You see, I came all this way to find the cottage, where she wrote the books—the little table, the creaking door, she added, but to no visible reaction. I couldn’t find out much about any of this while in London—thank you so much for telling me.

He held the lych gate open for her and they started to walk back towards the main road together.

I can take you to her house if you’d like—it’s barely a mile or so up the lane. I’ve done my morning haying for the farm, before it gets too hot, so I’ve time to spare.

She smiled, a great big white winning smile, the kind of smile he could only imagine being American. That is awfully kind of you, thank you. You know, I was assuming people came all the time, like this, like me—do they?

He shrugged as he kept his pace slow to meet hers along the half-mile gravel drive that led down to the road from the Great House.

Often enough, I guess. Nothing really much to see, though. It’s just workers’ flats now, at the cottage—tenants in all the rooms.

He turned to see her face tighten in disappointment. As if to cheer her up, before he even knew what had come over him, he asked her about the books.

I’m not even sure I can answer that, she replied, as he pointed the way back down the country lane, opposite the end where his wagon sat with its load temporarily forgotten. I just feel, when I read her, when I reread her—which I do, more than any other author—it’s as if she is inside my head. Like music. My father first read the books to me when I was very young—he died when I was twelve—and I hear his voice, too, when I read her. Nothing made him laugh out loud, nothing, the way those books did.

He listened to her rambling on, then shook his head as if in disbelief.

You haven’t read her then? the woman asked, a disbelieving light in her own eyes meeting his.

Can’t say I’ve too much interest. Stick to Haggard and the like. Adventure stories, you know. Suppose you might judge me for that.

I would never judge anyone for what they read. She caught the ironic look on his face and added, with another broad smile, Although I guess I just did.

All the same, I never understood how a bunch of books about girls looking for husbands could be on par with the great writers. Tolstoy and such.

She looked at him with new interest. You’ve read Tolstoy?

Used to—I was going to be sent up to study, during the war, but both my brothers got called to fight. I stayed back here, to help out.

Do you all work the farm together then?

He looked away. No, miss. They’re both dead now. The war.

He liked to say the words like that, like a clean cut, sharp and deep and irrevocable. As if trying to stave off any further conversation. But he had the feeling that with her this approach might only invite more questions, so he quickly continued, By the way, see those two roads, where they meet—you came in from Winchester, from the left, yeah? Well, stick along here to the right—that’s now the main road to London—and you come into Chawton proper. That there’s the cottage up ahead.

Oh, that’s really awfully kind of you. Thank you. But you must read the books. You must. I mean, you live here—how can you not?

He wasn’t used to this kind of emotional persuasion—he just wanted to get back to his wagon of hay and be gone.

Just promise me, please, Mr.…?

Adam. The name’s Adam.

Mary Anne, she replied, extending her hand to shake his goodbye. "Start with Pride and Prejudice, of course. And then Emma—she’s my favourite. So bold, yet so wonderfully oblivious. Please?"

He shrugged again, tipped his cap at her, and started to walk off down the lane. He dared to look back only once, from just past the pond where the two roads met. He saw her still standing there, tall and slender in her midnight blue, staring at the redbrick cottage, at its bricked-up window and the white front door opening straight onto the lane.

---

When Adam Berwick had finished up the rest of his day’s work, he left the now-empty wagon back by the kissing gate and trudged along the main road until he reached the tiny terrace cottage that had been his home for the past handful of years.

The family had once been much larger, his father and mother and all three boys, of whom he was by far the youngest. They had owned a small farm, proudly held on to through four generations of his father’s family. This legacy had required all the Berwick men to take on hard manual labour starting very young. And he had loved it: the repetition, the unvarying cycle of the seasons, the going-straight-to-bed with no time to talk.

But Adam had also been an attentive and diligent student, teaching himself to read when barely five years old from the books his father left lying around the house, then reading every single thing he could get his hands on. He would visit the larger town of Alton with his mother every chance he could get. His favourite moment, even more than the sweets shop and the single large jawbreaker she would occasionally buy for him, was the chance to look at the children’s books at the library and find something new to borrow. Because—and he still did not understand how people like his brothers could not see this—inside the pages of each and every book was a whole other world.

He could disappear inside that world whenever he needed to—whenever he felt the outside world, and other people, pressing in on him—a pressure from social contact and expectations that was surely routine for everyone else, but affected him much more intensely and inexplicably. But he could also experience things from other people’s points of view and learn their lessons alongside them, and—most important to him—discover the key to living a happy life. He had a feeling that, outside his rough farming family, people were existing on a very different plane, with their emotions and their desires telegraphed along lines never-ending, vibrating in as-yet-unknown ears, creating little frictions and little sparks. His own life was full of little friction, and even fewer sparks.

Winning the scholarship to college had been the one exciting moment in his young life, only to be just as quickly taken away from him when his brothers were sent to war. He had been both too young to fight and, according to his mother, too grown-up now for what she called aimless study. The war had changed everything, and not just for his family—although everyone in the village acknowledged that the Berwicks had been harder hit than most, with both older boys killed in battle in the Aegean Sea in 1918 and the father less than a year later by the Spanish flu. There was a solicitude now, for his mother and for him, a deep community caring that had, at times, been all that had buoyed them from the deepest despair.

But as much as they were kept from falling into the abyss, they remained forever teetering on the brink. Neither he nor his mother, despite their different temperaments, seemed to possess energy for anything more than submission to life—the idea that they might have to fight their way out of their lot was beyond them. So only a few years after the war, between the debts and the grief and his mother’s constant complaining, they had sold the farm back to the Knight family at a significant discount. Over the generations various Berwicks had worked at the Knight estate as household staff or servants, his own mother and grandmother among them, and now Adam, too, would join their employment by gathering the hay each summer, and tilling the fields, and planting a few rotating crops of wheat and hops and barley.

Eventually the Knight family, like so many others in the village, began to suffer financial troubles of their own. Adam felt that they were all tied together, very much interdependent, and that the sale of the farm to the Knights, and the employment for him, were part of a larger community effort to sustain and survive.

He was surviving on the teetering brink—at least, he acted as if he were. But inside him, in the place that only books could touch, there remained both a deep unknowing and the deepest, most trenchant pain. Adam knew that part of his brain had shut down from all the pain, in a bizarre effort to protect itself, and his mother was even worse, for she appeared to be merely waiting to die, while constantly warning him how bad things would be without her. In the meantime she was simply going through the motions of mothering him—having his toast and tea ready in the morning, and then, as now, his supper kept warm for him at the end of the day.

They would sit there alone together at the kitchen table, just as they were doing now, and he would tell her about his work, and she would tell him about whom she had run into in the village, or in Alton if it was her midweek shopping day. They talked about anything and everything except the past.

But today he didn’t tell her about the young woman from America. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. For one thing, his mother was always on him to find a wife, and this stranger to town was so beyond him in her beauty as to be almost otherworldly. His mother was also one of the villagers for whom the connection to Jane Austen remained more an irritation than anything else. She saved her most bitter complaints for the tourists and gawkers who, often enough, did descend on the small village demanding information, demanding to see something, demanding that life here be just like in the books. As if the villagers’ little lives were somehow unreal, and the real thing—the only thing—that mattered, and the only thing that ever would, had happened over a hundred years ago.

---

He was becoming quite worried for Mr. Darcy.

It seemed to Adam that once a man notices a woman’s eyes to be fine, and tries to eavesdrop on her conversations, and finds himself overly affected by her bad opinion of him, then such a man is on the path to something uncharted, whether he admits it to himself or not. Adam did not know much about women (although his mother kept telling him it did not take much), but he wondered if in the history of life, as well as in literature, a man had ever fallen into such obvious lust as fast as Mr. Darcy, and not done anything about it except to inadvertently, and so successfully, push it away.

He appreciated more than ever that their small two-up, two-down terrace cottage, which sat next to a lane-way leading back from the main Winchester road, gave him his own bedroom and space to read. In his sparse room with its gabled ceiling was the plain twin bed—one half of a set—that he had slept in since his boyhood. A single oak armoire and an antique dresser stood in opposite corners of the room. And he had his shelf of books that had once belonged to his father—adventure novels, the boys’ treasury, and the greats like Conan Doyle and Alexandre Dumas and H. G. Wells. But now, next to his bed, lay a fairly thick hardcover book with a laminated cover, from the library, showing two women in bonnets whispering to each other, while a man in the background stood imperiously next to a garden urn.

He had discreetly slipped it across the counter at the lending library only two days earlier.

It was going fast.

But as much as it amused him, the book also confused him. For one thing, he wondered at the father character; he did not think it reflected well on Mr. Bennet to spend all his leisure time barricaded in his study or indulging his humour at the expense of everyone else. Mrs. Bennet was much more easily understood, but something about the Bennet household was still amiss, in a way that he did not recall encountering before in literature. Not among a big family at least. He had read books about orphans, and treachery among friends, and fathers sent off to debtors’ prison—but the biggest plots always turned on an act of revenge or greed or a missing will.

The Bennets, for all intents and purposes, simply didn’t like each other. He had not been expecting this at all from a lady writer with a commitment to happy endings. Yet, sadly, it felt more real to him than anything else he had ever read.

Finishing the chapter where Darcy shows his estate to the woman who once so robustly spurned his marriage proposal, Adam finally started to drift off to sleep. He recalled the recent visitor to his own town, the tiny cross on a chain, the white winning smile: tokens of the faith and hope so sadly missing from his own life. He could not conceive of the willingness to travel so far for something so whimsical—yet an unguarded happiness had also radiated from within the visitor, real happiness, the kind he had always searched for in books.

Reading Jane Austen was making him identify with Darcy and the thunderclap power of physical attraction that flies in the face of one’s usual judgment. It was helping him understand how even someone without much means or agency might demand to be treated. How we can act the fool and no one around us will necessarily clue us in.

He would surely never see the American woman again. But maybe reading Jane Austen could help him gain even a small degree of her contented state.

Maybe reading Austen could give him the key.

Chapter Two

Chawton, Hampshire

October 1943

Dr. Gray sat alone at the desk in his office, a small room off the larger front parlour that acted as his examining room. He stared miserably at the X-ray film before him. Both of Charles Stone’s legs had been so severely crushed, the good doctor could not imagine any degree of function being regained over time.

He held the X-ray back up to the golden October light streaming in from the side window and squinted at it one last time, even though he knew there was nothing more to see—nothing that would make any of this one jot easier to relay.

Having grown up in Chawton, Dr. Gray had moved to London during the Great War for medical school and training, returning to the village in 1930 to take over old Dr. Simpson’s practice. Over the past thirteen years, he had welcomed into the world as many patients as he had seen out. He knew every family’s history and their doom—the ones where madness skipped a generation, or asthma did not. He knew which patients one could tell the cold hard truth to—and which ones fared better not knowing. Charlie Stone would do better not knowing, at least for now. He would keep from the edges of despair that way, until the march of time and increasing poverty took precedence over his pride.

Dr. Gray put his fingers to his temples and pushed in hard. Before him on the blotter pad rested a series of medicine bottles. He stared absentmindedly at one of them, then pushed himself up from the arms of his wooden swivel chair with resolution. It was mid-afternoon, and normally the time that his nurse and housekeeper would be bringing him his tea. But he needed some air, needed to clear his brain and find some respite from all the cares that piled up before him every day. He was the general practitioner for the village of Chawton, but also its confidant, father figure, and resident ghost—someone who knew more about the future, and the past, than anyone else.

He left his rose-covered thatched cottage through the green front door that was always open to patients and led straight out onto the street. Like all the former worker cottages, the house was so close to the main road that it practically half heaved itself onto it. His nurse, Harriet Peckham, tried to keep the front bay window’s lace curtains drawn as much as possible during patient visits, but the small beady eyes of the town had proven themselves even smaller still by a willingness to peer through the eyelet pattern and thin crack where the panels tried to meet.

He started down the lane and saw the Alton taxi pulling up at the junction where Winchester Road split in two, and where the old pond had only recently been drained. Three ducks could still on occasion be spotted meandering about the roads, searching for their lost paradise. But right now Dr. Gray was watching three middle-aged women instead, as they stepped out of the cab amidst a flurry of hats and handbags, landing right in front of the old Jane Austen cottage.

Despite the war now stretching across the Atlantic, women of a certain age still saw fit to travel to Chawton to see where Austen had lived. Dr. Gray had always marvelled at their female spirit in coming to pay homage to the great writer. Something had been freed in them by the war; some essential fear that the world had tried to drum into them had collapsed in the face of an even greater enemy. He wondered if the future, just as the cinema foretold, belonged to these women. Chattering, gathering, travelling women, full of vigour and mission, going after what they wanted, big or small. Just like Bette Davis in Jezebel or Greer Garson in his favourite movie, Random Harvest.

Dr. Gray permitted himself one night a week to indulge a passion he had shared with his late wife: a bus trip into the neighbouring town of Alton to see the newest movie release. The rest of his free time he spent trying to distract himself from thinking about Jennie. But now, when the movie-house lights dimmed, and the couples slouched against each other even farther still, he allowed himself to picture his beloved wife and their own nights out at the cinema together. She had always wanted to see the weepies, those woman-centred films starring such actresses as Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck, and he would sometimes put up a little fuss, a little push for a Western or a gangster film—but he always ended up enjoying her choices as much as she did. Sometimes they would even skip the bus after and walk the half hour home in the moonlight instead, talking over the film they had just seen. He couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.

He had always loved her most for her mind—and he was smart enough to know that she was much smarter than him. She had been one of the few women at his college and had spent equal time in the library and in the lab. Her sharp mathematical mind could have been a real asset to the war effort, but this was one of many things about her that he would never know. She had died four years earlier from a simple fall down the stairs leading to their bedroom, hitting her head in the absolute worst way, on the one jutting part of the lowest stair that he had always meant to fix. The internal bleeding was swift and acute, and he had been completely unable to save her.

A doctor who can’t save his own wife achieves an unfortunate degree of notoriety to add to the grief and self-recrimination. No one was ever going to be harder on him than himself, but his professional pride often caused him to wonder if the other villagers might not blame him, too.

As he passed the trio of women chatting excitedly in front of the little white gate to the Austen cottage, he tipped his hat at them. He was not one of the villagers who considered them a nuisance to be wished away. Every person who made their village a site of pilgrimage was keeping alive the legacy and the aura of Austen, and as a lifelong fan himself, he appreciated that the villagers were involuntary caretakers of something much bigger than they could guess at.

He was turning onto the old Gosport Road that led to the Great House and neighbouring Knight estate when he saw a fellow member of the school board approaching him from that same direction.

They tipped their hats at each other, then the other man started in at a clip, Glad I ran into you, Benjamin. Having a problem again at the school.

Dr. Gray sighed. The new teacher?

The other man nodded. Yes, young Miss Lewis, as you surmised. She has those boys on a steady diet of lady authors from as far back as the 1700s. Can’t make her see reason. He paused. "Thought she might listen to

Reviews for The Jane Austen Society

[managedbybooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable."

The blurb sucked me in but I was disappointed by the execution. This was an okay read. I didn't love the narration style and I had a really hard time connecting to any of the characters.

[tsmom1219 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you’re a fan of Jane Austen’s books, you’ll love this. It wasn’t my cup of tea.

[micareads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

***I received this book as an ARC on Netgalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review***

I have heard a lot about this book in my reading groups and was anxious to get my hands on it and I was not disappointed.

The story is based in Chawton, England, and delves into the lives of several members of that community who are Jane Austen aficionados. A small group begins the Jane Austen Society in the hopes of putting together a small museum which tourists can visit and learn a little about Austen and her life. Throughout the story, there is plenty of background given on the characters that ultimately ties into Austen characters and the way people feel about them. There is genuine happiness at the way the story ends that it makes you want to know how their lives continue.

[romonko · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3 1/2 Stars. This book was enjoyable to listen to on Audible, even if it was a bit predictable. The setting of the book is post-WWII England in a tiny village called Chawton. Chawton's claim to fame is that is was the place where Jane Austen spent the last part of her life. Chawton Manor is now the home to a few surviving relatives Miss Austen, and the heir is a parsimonious and bitter man who is on his deathbed when the book opens. Everyone in Chawton knows everyone else, and most everyone is a Jane Austen fan. Even in this small village, there are long-buried secrets that have not made it out into the light of day yet. The group of Austen fans in Chawton start a charitable society in order to find a home for a Jane Austen interpretive museum. Money is tight for the beginning of the society, but soon an American actress who is a staunch Jane Austen fan comes to join the group. There are many setbacks and stumbles along the way as this group tries to achieve their goal. There are even some stories of love lost and found, and even old love found again. This is a an enjoyable book to listen to, and I felt quite immersed in the setting. A must-read for Jane Austen fans as there are many references to her work.

[gwendydd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is about a charming set of characters who live in the small town where Jane Austen wrote a lot of her books. They are all dealing with various forms of grief, loss, and loneliness, and all of them find Jane Austen's books to be a source of consolation and joy. They form a society to preserve Austen's legacy, especially the cottage where she wrote and the books she read. Working together in the society helps them make friends and find love.This is reasonably entertaining fluff, but it's very predictable. There are a lot of characters, and the novel is too short to really develop most of them. I was rather disappointed that the end of the book focused on everyone finding love, and kind of left off what happened to their goals of preserving Jane Austen's legacy.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A book about a group of lovers of books, specifically Jane Austen novels and how their lives intersect and sort of parallel Jane Austen novels when they come together to achieve one goal. Lots of nice exposition on Jane Austen characters and books.If you loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, I believe you will adore this one as well.Events span the two World Wars, but most of the narrative takes place just post-WWII. This one was a fast and enjoyable read. Now, I'm in the mood for some Austen!

[fionaanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For fans of Miss Austen, this book clearly hits the mark. But I've always been lukewarm about her works and this novel grew tiresome with its constant refrain about the awesomeness of Jane's assorted tomes; I chuckled appreciatively at Austen's relative saying she "preferred the Brontes". The characters and setting are believable enough but the tale is slow-moving, rather like Austen's works.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Drawn together by a love of Jane Austen, a group of people from different walks of life band together to preserve Jane Austen's home in Chawten and to start a Jane Austen society. There are some great characters, a bit of romance, and a secret that could change everything. The story is definitely driven by the characters and I really loved the way the various friendships developed.

[sjgirl-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Maybe I’m alone in this complaint but at times I was disoriented by the characters ages. The way some of them were talked about put a picture in my head of an elderly person only to discover they’re somewhere in their forties and even once their age had been plainly stated there were still these double-takes where I was like, wait, why are they talking about this person as if they’re at the end of their life when their chronological age said otherwise. I realize life expectancy was different then than now and we now also look at forty in younger terms than ever before, still, I’d imagine even in the 1940’s there would have been a glaring difference between a forty year old and a senior citizen on their deathbed and I wish that difference had been more apparent here, I mean, the way everyone discusses Frances you’d think she’s so over the hill that it’s a wonder her father would even be alive. The age thing also made an already large age gap in one romance feel gargantuan and for me picturing a young woman with basically her grandpa doused any possibility of being a fan of that pairing (in actuality he’s not grandpa age he’s just talked about like he is, still, he’s twenty or so years older, old enough to have been her doctor when she was a kid which I found uncomfortable). One other romance was clearly headed towards a dead end from the beginning while two other romances happen more off the page than on, particularly the LGBTQ one, so I really didn’t find myself all that invested in that aspect of the book. I did like Evie Stone to the point where I wished her life outside of her job had been explored further on the page, the pleasure she took in cataloging the library was wonderfully nerdy and assertive and I wanted more of her in the story.In addition to Evie, most of these three stars are due to the love with which Jane Austen and her books are discussed throughout this story. The engagement I failed to feel elsewhere in the book was always present in those conversations where the characters passionately dissected Jane’s characters. If you don’t have many fellow readers in your life, eavesdropping on those literary discussions is very enjoyable.

[vesper1931 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The seeds are sown in 1932 for a group of people to come together in Jane Austen's Chawton to help preserve her heritage. It starts with a chance meeting between an American lady, Mary Anne, a fan of Jane Austen and labourer Adam Berwick, which leads him to start reading Pride and Prejudice, and then her other works
By 1945 American actress Miss Mimi (Mary Anne) Harrison, acquires some of Jane Austen jewellery, via an auction at Sotheby where she meets auctioneer Yardley Sinclair. Then at Chawton we learn about Francis Knight, last of the Knights and an agoraphobic, Dr Grey, ex-school teacher Mrs Aveline Grover, Andrew Forrester solicitor and, Evie Stone, servant at the Manor.
A group of diverse people who are brought together because of their love of Jane Austen's books. Can the Society result in helping these wounded people. Will they be able to find what is missing in their lives, and will they at last allow romance to enter their lives.
An enjoyable and interesting story with its diverse characters
Received a paperback copy from the publishers

[smorton11 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I first started reading The Jane Austen Society back in February when I did nothing more than “blurb read” it – I read the first three chapters, enough to be able to write a concise but detailed blurb about it for submission to the Indie Next List and to the publisher, satisfying the unofficial requirement of my job as a bookseller. And in February, I didn’t really think too much more of it – it struck me as just another Austen story, nothing setting it apart, save the personal letter from the author, which is, admittedly, really cool.

But as my knee injury dragged on and self-isolating began and the bookstore closed (I’m back now, yay!), I was drawing further and further away from books that may have even remotely held my interest. I’ve wasn’t too inclined to finish it, and it was fiction – I’ve spent the last three years reading almost exclusively nonfiction. But then I needed a book to review for today, so I looked back at the post I did for May new releases and wondered what book I would want to read enough of for a full review. Since last weekend I powered through Lovely War in 36 hours, I figured I might want to take a chance on another historical fiction title.

I restarted The Jane Austen Society around 2pm yesterday and was finished by 9:30pm. I legitimately cannot recall a time where I read a non-graphic novel in one day while at home (I do it on vacation sitting on the beach all the time.) Right now, historical fiction calls to me (sung in my head in Moana’s voice) and I’ve now added a lot of Austen and Jane-related books to my reading list, including reading Northanger Abbey and finishing up The Austen Years, a memoir due in July. Laura is the true Austen devotee in the family while my interest has always been more passive.

Yes, I’ve watched all the movies and adaptations with her and can wax eloquent about the wonderfulness of Lizzie Bennet and the infuriating aspects of Emma’s personality with the best, but admittedly, Pride and Prejudice is the only one of Austen’s novels I’ve read in it’s entirety (I love the graphic novel adaptation of Northanger Abbey though it’s unfortunately out of print.) So I always wonder if I’m some sort of fake reviewing books about Austen, I feel woefully unqualified, comparatively speaking. And I don’t have a Darcy obsession, so I felt that ruled me out of most of the unofficial diehard fan clubs I stumbled across over the years.

But The Jane Austen Society is something truly special. Will being an Austenite enhance the enjoyment of reading it? Absolutely. But even a passing knowledge of England’s greatest novelist (I’ve read Dickens and Chaucer and will stand by this statement) will suffice in ensuring decent comprehension of the numerous references to her many works peppered throughout.

I’ve read a quite a few debuts in my days as a bookseller, though not many before. I was very much the type of reader who needed books to be vetted by others before I spent my time reading them and I’m very glad this is not the case any more. The Jane Austen Society, having now finished it, is a book that I sped through and wished I had read more slowly so that I could have savored the reading experience more.

Every sentence, every turn of phrase, every allusion, every piece of dialog, is so deliberate and exact – nothing is written without purpose. Each and every character is so perfectly crafted with such compassion and empathy, one had me bawling within 100 pages, I can’t remember the last time I got so attached to a cast of characters so quickly. Those most familiar with the novels will be able to draw some early connections between Natalie’s newcomers and Jane’s iconic characters, but Natalie’s are fully and completely their own.

As I read, I felt I was walking around Chawton, immersing myself in the world of her colorful inhabitants, surprised by how they handled certain situations, while simultaneously feeling like they were behaving exactly as they should. The plot is intricate and beautifully woven, written by the hand of the master storyteller – I continually had to pinch myself that this is a debut novel.

Natalie Jenner has a background in many areas (as do I), but her history as a bookseller shines through so brightly in her writing. As booksellers we read hundreds if not thousands of books every year from many publishers. We know that of those books, few truly hold our attention and even fewer are ones that we want to sit back and read cover to cover, savoring each and every word on each and every page. Natalie’s debut is a bookseller’s dream – the perfect gift for a loved one, a great book for a summer afternoon read, a book that makes you feel all the feels, a contemporary Jane Austen.

[stevelindahl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The plot and the main characters in The Jane Austen Society are fictional, but many of the facts about Jane Austen and Chawton UK, the community where Miss Austen spent the last eight years of her life, are real. The story takes place in Chawton, just after World War II, more than a hundred years after Jane Austen died. The characters are still living with the pain of the world war, but they have the support of each other. This novel honors the value of intimate friendships and small-town life.The story is about Jane Austen fans, who are obsessed with her books. They read and re-read the novels repeatedly, then compare the characters' lives and values with their own. They have decided to form a society with the purpose of raising money to establish a museum honoring Austen. These fans consist mainly of people who have grown up in Chawton, but a few others, also obsessed with Austen, are brought into the group. Among those additions there is a famous actress named Mimi Harrison and an auctioneer from Sotheby's named Yardley Sinclair. The group ends up with a wonderful mix of expertise, fame and down-home charm. These friends love literature, specifically Austen's books, but also learn to love each other. There is romance in the book as well as barriers to overcome in pursuit of their goals.The book is charming and fun, but also has its tense moments. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[herenya_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In 1946 a fictional Jane Austen Society sets out to purchase Austen’s former home and turn it into a museum.I enjoyed the characters’ discussions of Austen’s novels but, much to my surprise, this book just didn’t didn’t make me care about the Society’s goal. And I thought the romances would have been more satisfying if at least one of them had been portrayed with greater depth. Especially since all the discussion of Austen’s work meant I was more inclined to contrast this story with Austen’s than I would have otherwise been. (Invoke comparisons with Austen at your peril, authors!)

[yukon92 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a lovely book about people in a tiny British town (set in the 1940s) who care so much about Jane Austen and preserving her legacy.Are there plans to make this book into a movie?

[mickyfine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the small village of Chawton just after WWII has ended a small group of individuals, connected by their mutual love of Jane Austen, form the Jane Austen Society with the goal of purchasing her former cottage in Chawton to convert into a museum. Along the way they'll grow, learn, and find love.I'm always a sucker for anything involving Jane Austen and I'm also pretty fond of historical novels set in WWII or post-WWII England so it was a no-brainer putting this novel on my want to read list. It's a solid read with a cast of broken people who slowly put themselves back together with the help of Austen's novels and each other. It's more a character study than about the plot and I can see this being a novel that people love but for me it was a little too predictable. That said the writing is beautiful and the insights on Austen's works the characters share with each other is pretty spot on. If it sounds like it might be your thing, I'd recommend it.

[pgchuis · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I just skimmed this really. I found the characters superficial and the discussions of Austen's work unremarkable.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a bittersweet triumph, of learning to live with grief and celebrate joy, if being brought together by Jane Austen. I went to Chawton House last summer, and hearing a fictional account of how the society came together was heartwarming.

[sprainedbrain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First, I would like to personally thank Natalie Jenner, because it’s pretty obvious this book was written just for me.

[john_warner-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Chawton, a small community in southeast England, is primarily noted as the residence of Jane Austin when she was writing her most famous novels. Shortly after WWII, five individuals who have experienced losses in their lives, e.g., loss of a child, loss of a spouse, loss of youth, etc., share a love for Jane Austin. Each are finding healing through her writings. The group's reverence for Jane Austin's books is so great they decide to form a society with the goal to set up a center for the preservation and study of her works. However, when the patriarch of the estate which includes the Jane Austin library dies, the possessions are at risk of being sold to a number of disseminated buyers. I enjoyed the Jane Austen Society, finding the characters' individual stories engaging and the plot interesting; however, not enough to consider it a great read. However, if you are a Jane Austin fan, you might consider this book as a future read.

[ethel55_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a very enjoyable read about a disparate group who come together over their love of Jane Austen. It starts a bit slowly, between the wars, but I realized the set up in Chawton (the true site of the place Jane and sister Cassandra lived near the end of Jane's life) was necessary to the story as a whole. There's a recluse, a doctor, a farmer, a widow, a Hollywood star--characters Jane would have been proud of to call her own as they navigate the possible sale of the Knight family estate and whether a cottage can be used as a museum for their newly formed Jane Austen Society. I knew the book had done its' job when I was itching to grab my own copy of Pride and Prejudice for an umpteenth re read. We'll see what fall brings.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't always love fiction inspired by Jane Austen. Those books usually leave me wishing I was reading the real thing. This one was delightful though. It's about a group of people who live in the tiny English village where Austen wrote some of her novels. They form a society to try to preserve her legacy. Each of their stories, from Mimi the Hollywood star to Adeline, the strong young widow, mirrored a portion of an Austen novel or added a new layer to the impact she had on the world. This was a cup of hot cocoa that hit the spot. “Dr. Gray is a good man,” Adam replies simply. “Yes, he is—which is remarkable, given how clearly he sees everyone and everything.”“Like Austen herself.”“Yes.” Adeline Set up even straighter in agreement. “Exactly. The humanity—the love for people—mixed with seeing them for who they really are. Loving them enough to do that. Loving them in spite of that.”“Reading is wonderful, but it does keep us in our heads. It’s why I can’t read certain authors when I am in low spirits.”“But one can always read Austen.”“And that’s exactly what Austen gives us. A world so part of our own, yet so separate, that entering it is like some kind of tonic. Even with so many flawed and silly characters, it all makes sense in the end. It may be the most sense we’ll ever get to make out of our own messed-up world that’s why she laughs, like Shakespeare. It’s all in there, all of life, all the stuff that counts, and keeps counting, all the way to here, to you.”"It is part of me, that awful, irrevocable act. And I am never going to be quite whole again because of it. You are not the problem: the loss is.”

[shazjhb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A satisfying book

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Extremely enjoyable and not just for fans of Jane Austen! A fictional account of the Jane Austen's hometown in the 1940s and the fight to make a memorial and preserve the village's world famous authoress' home before all of her belongings and buildings associated with her were sold. An outspoken young teacher, the village doctor, a poor farmer, a wealthy Hollywood star, and a maid come together to make a society aimed at preserving the legacy of an author they all know in love. In the process friendships are formed and romance may be on the verge of blooming for the romantics at heart. All the characters are flawed, yet take solace in Jane Austen's words, never realizing that in instances - their actions mirror those of their favorite characters. They all delight in living in the very place that she too wrote the books which they so love. Wonderful, fun, and chock full of history and romance.

[carole888fort · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner is a delightful English yarn, an antidote to today’s troubled times. Chawton is a quaint village where Jane Austen lived with her family one hundred and fifty years ago. There are few family members left and the property is in danger of being sold to a golf course consortium. A small group of citizens, an odd bunch at that, take on the difficult task of maintaining the estate, along with the memory of the renowned author. Thus is formed the Jane Austen Society. The group consists of a teacher, a bachelor lawyer, a widowed country doctor, a quiet farmer, an actress, a servant and the last living relative of the Austen family. Everyone is devoted to the Austen legacy and will use their skills and their love of the novels to ensure the continuity of the heritage. This will not be an easy endeavour. The novel is beautifully written. If you are looking for a little escape, spend a few hours in Chawton with Jane Austen and her protectors. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[bookscookslooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was charmed by this book from the first pages. It’s not a fast paced book, nor is it what I would call a passionate book. It rolls along rather like life in the small English village in which it takes place. The book takes place after WWII (with some flashbacks) in the village where Jane Austen wrote her novels. People come to see where the famous author lived and are often disappointed that the villagers are not as excited as they are that they abide in the town where such greatness was created.The town is inhabited by a number of different characters each one loving or coming to love the novels of Jane Austen. They are all also suffering from the aftereffects of the War with some families having lost sons, fathers, husbands. The town doctor is a widower having lost his wife to an at home accident and he suffers a level of guilt that he could not save her.There is a subplot with an American actress who is obsessed with Jane Austen who collects memorabilia. She ends up becoming a member of the society through her love of Austen.As some of the town folk start to come together to preserve the memory of and remaining history left from Ms. Austen’s stay they form the Jane Austen Society. It helps to heal individuals and the whole village as they work to celebrate the woman who wrote about relationships in such a down to earth way.This was a lovely read for the most part. There is a discordant arc with the American actress that takes a dark, turn that seems very out of place from the rest of the tale. Other than that the story rolls along with some delightful twists and turns that make small town reading worth the time.There are many references to the various Austen works in the book. It has been a very long time since I last read any of her novels but I didn’t feel at a loss. I do think a working knowledge of the various characters and the books will be helpful but is not a deal breaker to enjoy the book. But I suspect that anyone who chooses this title will be a Jane Austen fan.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner, a debut novel, is a treat for Janeites (not "Austenites" as I sometimes call them!) It's set in the village of Chawton in Hampshire, England after WWII. Enthusiasts would venture to see this area in which JA lived and wrote (as did my wife and I did many years later), but there was nothing organized there and no museum. Chawton House, where she spent her last eight years and saw all of her books published (some written before moving there) is at risk of being purchased by developers.Adeline, a young widow who lost her husband late in the war, banters Austen-like with Dr. Gray, a reticent (with her) fellow Austen enthusiast who is attracted but thinks he's too old for her. They're joined by five other locals (well, one not so local) from unlikely backgrounds, hoping to save Chawton House and turn it into the museum it is today. Among others, there is a quiet, shy farmer, a Hollywood movie star, and a chipper teenager. They all trade quotes from Austen's books like enthusiasts quote Star Wars today, and you end up rooting for all of them to sort out their dissatisfying lives and, for some, find Austen-worthy romance.I think those who who haven't read Austen would like this book, but those who have read her will enjoy it that much more.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I no longer remember when or how I first came across Jane Austen and her works. She seems to have always been a part, a happy part, of my reading life. I've read the six novels many times, for pleasure and for school, and I've spent hours watching film adaptations and reading modern retellings, books inspired by her works, and books about the author herself. If there is the slightest hint that a book has a connection to Austen, I am all but guaranteed to pick it up. So I was delighted to discover Natalie Jenner's new novel, The Jane Austen Society, a fictionalized account of the founding of the eponymous Jane Austen Society, about a group of people in Chawton trying to preserve Austen's legacy before it's too late.Set mainly just post-WWII, with only two brief bits outside of this time frame, one before the war and one during, the novel echoes Austen's own stories in the best way. An ensemble cast, composed primarily of residents of Chawton, where Austen lived out the last years of her life in a cottage on the grounds of her older brother's estate, comes together with a few outsiders who are also transported by Austen's works as they try to create a place worthy of the author, a place that justifies the pilgrims that periodically find their way to the small village looking for any sign of the once lived life of Jane Austen. Just as in Austen, the action centers almost entirely in the village, paying similar attention to the everyday realities of the main characters, Austen descendant Miss Frances Knight, farmer Adam Berwick, the widowed Dr. Gray, former teacher and war widow Adeline Grover, the young maid Evie Stone, lawyer Andrew Forrester, and outsiders actress Mimi Harrison and Sotheby's representative Yardley Sinclair, and the society they live in as do Austen's own novels. Each character is simply living his or her ordinary life when they come together in a passion project to do an extraordinary thing, to create the society. And as they create the society, their regular lives and small but important dramas continue to unfold. They are very different from each other on the surface but they are all touched in some way by real life, facing death, addiction, poverty, grief, and disappointment, understanding and learning their own hearts and their very beings, and finding or rediscovering love. And just as in Austen, there is also a villain who could derail the hopes of the society and a crass heir who cares for nothing beyond money.Jenner has written a completely delightful novel and tied it to Austen, not just in name but in the very fabric of the story she's created. Had Austen been writing a little more than a century onward from her own time, she very well might have written characters like these, found in her own small village in the aftermath of the war. Certainly Jenner has captured the themes of Austen, love and friendship, the state of society and the paths in life open to people from each stratum within it. She has captured the change afoot after the war and its lasting effect on all those who lived through it, even if only indirectly. The reader will warm to and sympathize with each of the main characters, rooting for them to find a way to preserve Austen's quiet legacy amidst the setbacks, legal, financial, and personal. The opening of the novel is a bit slow and the sheer number of characters can be overwhelming until the way that they come together and start to weave in and out of each others' lives consistently becomes clear but the slow build is definitely worth the payoff. Austen fans will love this addition to the books about the author and the impact of her works on ordinary people, smiling broadly as yet another Austen element makes its way into the story and on the page. It is a lovingly drawn picture of an English village post war, a time capsule of society, a historical fiction full of heart. It is not even close to the actual true story of the founding of the Jane Austen Society, nor does it try to be. What it is instead, is a charming novel dedicated to the spirit of Austen, an imagined and creative exploration into the continued importance of literature and reading in our lives, and the ever enduring legacy of Austen and her novels.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like Frances Knight, I'm more of a Bronte fan than one of Jane Austen. Still, this novel about how a mismatched group bonds over a shared love of literature and endeavors to save a classic author's historic home is one that can warm the heart of any book-lover. Each character is damaged in their own way and they each find their way to a kind of happiness, all while debating the motives of Jane Austen's characters and analyzing the text of her novels. Overall, a charming read and highly recommended for Jane Austen fans.

[constant2m · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Jane Austen Society far exceeded my expectations as a period piece that takes readers into Jane Austen's world. Set in the forties, the story follows individuals from a small town in England along with several outsiders who are all drawn together by their love for Jane Austen's work. They eventually form a society for the preservation of all things Austen.What I love most about this book is the ordinariness of the characters. In some ways, this resembles Austen's work, which focuses on the daily lives and ordinary (yet witty) conversations between the individuals. The conversations often revolved around Austen's writing, but just as frequently were about life. The writing was vivid and so delightful, making readers feel at home in 1945 England. Relationships developed at an ordinary pace, but there were still plenty of surprises.There were a lot of major characters, but fairly easy to keep track of since they were all so different from each other. Adeline, the former too-progressive school teacher, and Dr. Gray, the doctor, were my favorites. I didn't love the movie star's backstory, but she was still a wonderful character and it was fun to see the impact of adding an American to the otherwise all-English-cast. I did love that a teenager was thrown into the mix. The characters had depth and changed as the story progressed. Two of the subplots were clearly the stories of Emma and Persuasion. I think there may be more of Austen's stories embedded in this book, but that will require a closer reading of both Austen's novels and Jenner's. Challenge accepted.The pacing was good. The first few chapters were interesting but felt disconnected, jumping forward rapidly and then going backwards again. After the initial confusion, everything became linear and started moving forward at a steady pace. At that point, it became nearly impossible for me to put the book down - I just couldn't wait to see what happened next and how things would turn out for each person.Natalie's writing was beautiful and I already want to reread the book, although I think I'll wait to let it settle a bit before I do. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves Jane Austen and historical fiction and good storytelling. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and have reviewed it willingly.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’m a librarian and I know that literature has the power to heal. While I’ve never been the fervent Jane Austen fan, I was fascinated by the group of such different people brought together to save part of Austen’s heritage. I loved discussion of the characters and how different people related to different Austen books. This is one of those gentle books, there are problems, the ending is slightly different than what I had hoped for but it was a satisfying book. What the book does best is show how two hundred years after her death, Austen’s writing still speaks to readers.