Lit Flicks Challenge: Jane Austen Book Club

My first novel / movie combination for the Lit Flicks challenge was The Jane Austen Book Club. In a rare and strange occurance, I saw the movie before I read the novel. Mostly because I enjoyed the movie so much.

So I have the unusual ability this time to wonder which I enjoyed more.

To review the book first ... it was rather slow. Fowler is a very good author and I think that I just wasn't in the mood. This would be a very good, rainy day, skip work read. All cuddled up with nothing much to worry about, and looking for a little modern day Austen to keep you company. But I think my mood at the time I was reading this (just having finished something else on Henry VIII) hindered my enjoyment.

At any rate, definitely worth a read. It was only 300 or so pages, very quick once I sat down and got going at it.

The movie stays relatively faithful, except they leave out a great deal of back story on Jocelyn and Sylvia, and they completely butcher Prudie and Dean. Everything else, pretty dead on. Except for Prudie and Dean, and this is what irritated me the most now that I've read the book ...

I think that the screenwriters / directors had the same problem with action that I did. The book is rather meandering. It's just a steady pace through 6 people's lives as they read Jane Austen books. No one dies, some people do get hurt, but really, it's just a very steady paced novel.

So I think those reasons are why they said that Prudie, a high school French teacher, wanted to have an affair with one of her students, that her husband cancelled their trip to France for a basketball game, and that she almost met said high school student at a motel.

In the novel, and this just really made so much more sense, Prudie didn't get to go to France because her mother died (who also wasn't as crazy as the movie portrayed her), she didn't underestand why her dishy husband loved her, and he was just way too nice to her. The novel didn't really wrap anything up with a bow (also maybe part of my reserve in liking it) and the movie (catering to Americans) probably felt it needed to. Hence the final scene at the library dinner.

I liked both movie and novel, for different reasons. But I was really frustrated with the movie after reading the novel and discovering what they did to Prudie.