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Post date: Jan 03, 2014 3:33:4 AM
Sadly a number of regulars were missing from our December meeting due to illness or scheduling conflicts, but five of us gathered at my house on December 19 to discuss The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen, Lindsey Ashford's fictionalized exploration of the life and death of Jane Austen. The book definitely appealed more to those of us who were Jane Austen fans. It made Karen think about her reaction to Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna: she mused that the fictionalization of the lives of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in that book were more difficult to accept because they lived more recently than Jane Austen, whose life is less well documented, and farther removed. Both Mary and Maggie felt the book dragged on and all of us found the characters confusing especially at the beginning. We all agreed that a cast of characters list would have been helpful. As a Jane Austen fan, I enjoyed the book more than some others, and was happy to live in this world for awhile, whether or not it was an accurate portrayal. And we were all fascinated by the bathing machine, and specifically the idea that women bathed in the nude, which was not what we had otherwise thought. It’s hard to say definitively, but this website has a long discussion of bathing at that time, and seems to conclude that Jane would likely have been wearing a flannel bathing garment.
--Sherrill
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