Okay, because this isn't school, and I don't have to have an order, here are some of my thoughts, in no particular order and devoid of elegant transitions.
1. A quote that I loved from the second chapter, "When happy, she was uncontrollable, when sad, inconsolable, until she changed--fast as a finger snap--long after you'd given up" (45). I just adore the rhythm; it reminds me of Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman."
2. Nope. Two-thirds of the way through the book and I still dislike the narrative structure. "Grigg didn't tell us any of this, because he thought we wouldn't be interested" (126)--awkward, awkward, and more awkward. Of course, if I was writing a paper on this, I'd probably argue that it was a failed attempt at something innovative, and potentially I'd identify a 3rd person narrator position at the outermost level of the story that gives us the character info, and the 1st person plural as a sub-narrator within that narrator that doesn't know the additional information, except that makes the quote wrong, and oh that's right--awkward!
3. I normally love 'fan' books and adaptations (Wuthering High is pretty fun), but this one isn't doing it for me. I'm curious what the author feels about adaptation and Austen. Her characters were rather narrow-minded about the film adaptation of Mansfield Park (if you won't be satisfied with anything less than the exact book, then read the book, don't go see a movie of it), yet Fowler's work is predicated on offering a modern critique of Austen's books, which is exactly what a good adaptation does--offers a reading of the text. She just has her characters talk about it rather than actually doing it (and as we've all learned the best writing shows rather than tells).
4. Some minutiae--I love Grigg's observation that Northanger Abbey was "very pomo" made me laugh, and then the pseudo-narrator's comment that "over at the university, people were paid to worry about such things; they'd soon have it well in hand" (138). I'm a big nerd for the academic fiction (or academic elements to other fiction).
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So on this whole narrative issue that Sarah states better than the rest of us (although I'm sure we all feel it), I think that we can identify the narrator as The Book Club, right? A collective wisdom of sorts. I think that's what she was going for, which seems like an interesting idea, but I just don't think she pulled it off very well.
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