🇺🇸 Read: Natalie Jenner: The Jane Austen Society

 This book came with high recommendation from Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I totally agree with her.

The book is set shortly after World War II, in Chawton, UK.

Never heard about it? It was the village where Jane Austen lived the last years of her life. Though in the 1950s, Jane Austen wasn’t quite the super star she is today, a few of the villagers really love her books and find peace and solace in reading them over and over again:

There is Florence Knight, a real descendant of Jane Austen’s brother, a spinster in her 50s, terrorized by her  old father.

Adam, a farmer and village aid, still living with his spiteful mother

Dr. Benjamin Grey, the village physician who lost his beloved wife and their daughter

Andrew Forester, the town solicitor, who knows what the fate of the Knight estate will be,

Adeline, the former village school teacher, pregnant with her first child, who’s husband died in the war,

Evie, a maid in the Knight household, who had to leave school at age 14, but who really loves books, and,

Mimi, a Hollywood actress with a great passion for Jane Austen, who stops by to visit the last place she lived.

This diverse group of women and men, poor and wealthy bonds over their common love for Jane Austen and their shared goal to preserve her memory. 

Life doesn’t mean to well with either of them in the trying times after the war, and, like in true Jan Austen manner, one or the other may find love and  compassion in rather unexpected ways.

While the story line is entertaining and interesting enough, this is also a book about book lovers and the joy of reading and finding likeminded people who love the same books. 

I read this book as an audio and loved the narration, too.