Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Karen Joy Fowler

As part of Bluffton University's annual English Festival, novelist Karen Joy Fowler is in town and I attended a reading last night at the library. She read a short story (which was actually pretty long), and then answered questions.

The question-answering was the most interesting part. She answered every question with interesting and funny stories (like comparing her husband to the Winnie the Pooh character Eeyore). In retrospect, what is most impressive is that she never once stumbled over her words or hesitated, it was as if she has a special gift of communicating clearly and with well thought out responses to anything thrown at her.

Ms. Fowler is best-known for her bestselling book "The Jane Austen book Club". In reading Wikipedia's account of this book , it sounds quite complex and character-driven, the sort of book which could never be made into a movie. However, it *is" a movie, directed by Robin Swicord and released two years ago. When asked if she liked the movie, Ms. Fowler said she was quite upset while it was being made, because it didn't seem as if the movie-makers were being faithful to her book. However, when she eventually saw the movie, she found she actually liked it pretty well. I notice that IMDB has it rated 7.1, a pretty favorable rating.

I am looking forward to her speech later this morning at Forum.

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