The Jane Austen Book Club, The Egyptologist

Still playing catch-up now, remembering stuff I've been reading...

The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler

So I went out and read The Jane Austen Book Club. I don't read much contemporary mainstream fiction anymore because I tend to find it unimpressive, but I love Austen, re-read her every decade or so, and thought this sounded pretty good. And it was, well, pretty good, nothing great. In fact, I thought it was kind of cute but, blah, - what was all the fuss about? I scoured some reviews to see if anyone agreed with me - learned that Karen Joy Fowler writes science fiction too - found that Meghan O'Rourke and Stephen Metcalf at Slate had the same reaction as me. Didn't know that Oprah had chosen Anna Karenina for her book club; wonder how that went.

The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips

Went and got this from the library, don't remember why, I think I must have read something about "one of the few contemporary novels in epistolary form", plus it was a mystery, so hey, why not? Like The Jane Austen Book Club, it has some clever writing, but not much else going for it. Two unreliable narrators sort of interest you in trying to figure out what's really going on, but you figure it out about half way through the book (though I may be slow - I'm one of those mystery readers who usually doesn't know whodunit until it's revealed by the author). I sort of kept reading to the end because there was one little inconsistency I couldn't figure out. Otherwise, I don't know if I would have stuck with it because the main characters are only mildly interesting, the secondary characters are leaden caricatures though they're supposed to be comic caricatures, and the antiquated style of the letter-writing is grating. Having said all that, some of the black comedy works well and the main character's slanted reporting of Howard Carter's "trivial" Tutankhamen find is hilarious.


Well, that's it for my disappointing little foray into the mainstream. I'm going back to my science fiction staples after this. At least genre fiction, when it's bad, can have interesting ideas to redeem it. In fact, I'm trying to think back to the last contemporary non-sci-fi novel I really, really loved. It couldn't have been as far back as A Suitable Boy, could it? Geez. The NY Public Libary probably has a record of all the books I've ever taken out; it's too bad I can't get access to it! Though I wonder if, for privacy, they purge each record after I've returned the book? I must ask them the next time I'm in a branch...