Karen Joy Fowler - The Jane Austen Book Club

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The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy Fowler
FOR SEAN PATRICK JAMES TYRRELL.
Missing and forever missed.
Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that
something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
—JANE AUSTEN,Emma
Prologue
Each of us has a private Austen.
Jocelyn’s Austen wrote wonderful novels about love and court-ship, but never married. The book club
was Jocelyn’s idea, and she handpicked the members. She had more ideas in one morn-ing than the rest
of us had in a week, and more energy, too. It was essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly,
Jocelyn said, let her look around. We suspected a hidden agenda, but who would put Jane Austen to an
evil purpose?
Bernadette’s Austen was a comic genius. Her characters, her di-alogue remained genuinely funny, not
like Shakespeare’s jokes, which amused you only because they were Shakespeare’s and you owed him
that.
Bernadette was our oldest member, just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She’d recently announced
that she was, officially, let-ting herself go. “I just don’t look in the mirror anymore,” she’d told us. “I wish
I’d thought of it years ago....
“Like a vampire,” she added, and when she put it that way, we wondered how it was that vampires
always managed to look so dapper. It seemed that more of them should look like Bernadette.
Prudie had once seen Bernadette in the supermarket in her bedroom slippers, her hair sticking up from
her forehead as if she hadn’t even combed it. She was buying frozen edamame and capers and other
items that couldn’t have been immediately needed.
Bernadette’s favourite book wasPride and Prejudice; she’d told Jocelyn that it was probably
everyone’s favourite. She recom-mended starting with it. But Sylvia’s husband of thirty-two years had
just asked for a divorce, and Jocelyn would not subject her, the news so recent and tender, to the dishy
Mr. Darcy. “We’ll start withEmma,” Jocelyn had answered. “Because no one has ever read it and
wished to be married.”
Jocelyn met Sylvia when they were both eleven years old; they were in their early fifties now. Sylvia’s
Austen was a daughter, a sister, an aunt. Sylvia’s Austen wrote her books in a busy sitting room, read
them aloud to her family, yet remained an acute and non-partisan observer of people. Sylvia’s Austen
could love and be loved, but it didn’t cloud her vision, blunt her judgment.
It was possible that Sylvia was the whole reason for the book club, that Jocelyn wished only to keep her
occupied during a dif-ficult time. That would be like Jocelyn. Sylvia was her oldest and closest friend.
Wasn’t it Kipling who said, “Nothing like Jane when you’re in a tight spot”? Or something very like that?
I think we should be all women,” Bernadette suggested next. “The dynamic changes with men. They
pontificate rather than communicate. They talk more than their share.”
Jocelyn opened her mouth.
“No one can get a word in,” Bernadette warned her. “Women are too tentative to interrupt, no matter
how long someone has gone on.
Jocelyn cleared her throat.
“Besides, men don’t do book clubs,” Bernadette said. “They see reading as a solitary pleasure. When
they read at all.”
Jocelyn closed her mouth.
Yet the very next person she asked was Grigg, whom we none of us knew. Grigg was a neat,
dark-haired man in his early for-ties. The first thing you noticed about him was his eyelashes, which were
very long and thick. We imagined a lifetime of aunts regretting the waste of those lashes in the face of a
boy.
We’d known Jocelyn long enough to wonder whom Grigg was intended for. Grigg was too young for
some of us, too old for the rest. His inclusion in the club was mystifying.
Those of us who’d known Jocelyn longer had survived multi-ple setups. While they were still in high
school, she’d introduced Sylvia to the boy who would become her husband, and she’d been maid of
honour at the wedding three years after they gradu-ated. This early success had given her a taste for
blood; she’d never recovered. Sylvia and Daniel. Daniel and Sylvia. Thirty-plus years of satisfaction,
though it was, of course, harder to take pleasure in that just now.
Jocelyn had never been married herself, so she had ample time for all sorts of hobbies.
She’d spent fully six months producing suitable young men for Sylvia’s daughter, Allegra, when Allegra
turned nineteen. Now Allegra was thirty, and the fifth person asked to join our book club. Allegra’s
Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she’d worked in a
bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.
Allegra got short, expensive haircuts and wore cheap, sexy shoes, but neither of those facts would have
made any of us think twice if she hadn’t also, on occasions too numerous to count, re-ferred to herself as
a lesbian. Jocelyn’s inability to see what had never been hidden eventually became offensive, and Sylvia
took her aside and asked why she was having so much trouble getting it. Jocelyn was mortified.
She switched to suitable young women. Jocelyn ran a kennel and bred Rhodesian Ridgebacks. The dog
world was, as it hap-pily turned out, awash in suitable young women.
Prudie was the youngest of us at twenty-eight. Her favourite novel wasPersuasion, the last completed
and the most sombre. Prudie’s was the Austen whose books changed every time you read them, so that
one year they were all romances and the next you sud-denly noticed Austen’s cool, ironic prose.
Prudie’s was the Austen who died, possibly of Hodgkin’s disease, when she was only forty-one years
old.
Prudie would have liked it if we’d occasionally acknowledged the fact that she’d won her invitation as a
genuine Austen devo-tee, unlike Allegra, who was really there only because of her mother. Not that
Allegra wouldn’t have some valuable insights; Prudie was eager to hear them. Always good to know
what the lesbians were thinking about love and marriage.
Prudie had a dramatic face, deep-set eyes, white, white skin, and shadowed cheeks. A tiny mouth and
lips that almost disap-peared when she smiled, like the Cheshire cat, only opposite. She taught French at
the high school and was the only one of us cur-rently married, unless you counted Sylvia, who soon
wouldn’t be. Or maybe Grigg—we didn’t know about Grigg—but why would Jocelyn have invited him if
he was married?
None of us knew who Grigg’s Austen was.
The six of us—Jocelyn, Bernadette, Sylvia, Allegra, Prudie, and Grigg—made up the full roster of the
Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club. Our first meeting was at Jocelyn’s
house.
March
CHAPTER ONE
in which we gather
at Jocelyn’s
to discussEmma
We sat in a circle on Jocelyn’s screened porch at dusk, drink-ing cold sun tea, surrounded by the smell
of her twelve acres of fresh-mowed California grass. There was a very pretty view. The sunset had been
a spectacular dash of purple, and now the Berryessa mountains were shadowed in the west. Due south in
the springtime, but not the summer, was a stream.
“Just listen to the frogs,” Jocelyn said. We listened. Appar-ently, somewhere beneath the clamour of her
kennel of barking dogs was a chorus of frogs.
She introduced us all to Grigg. He had brought the Gramercy edition of the complete novels, which
suggested that Austen was merely a recent whim. We really could not approve of someone who showed
up with an obviously new book, of someone who had the complete novels on his lap when onlyEmma
was under discussion. Whenever he first spoke, whatever he said, one of us would have to put him in his
place.
This person would not be Bernadette. Though she’d been the one to request girls only, she had the best
heart in the world; we weren’t surprised that she was making Grigg welcome. “It’s so lovely to see a man
taking an interest in Miss Austen,” she told him. “Delightful to get the male perspective. We’re so pleased
that you’re here.” Bernadette never said anything once if it could be said three times. Sometimes this was
annoying, but mostly it was restful. When she’d arrived, she seemed to have a large bat hanging over her
ear. It was just a leaf, and Jocelyn removed it as they hugged.
Jocelyn had two portable heaters going, and the porch hummed cosily. There were Indian rugs and
Spanish-tile floors of a red that might hide dog hair, depending on the breed. There were porcelain lamps
in the shape of ginger jars, round and Oriental, and with none of the usual dust on the bulbs, because it
was Jocelyn’s house. The lamps were on timers. When it was suffi-ciently dark out, at the perfect
moment, they would snap on all at once like a choir. This hadn’t happened yet, but we were look-ing
forward to it. Maybe someone would be saying something brilliant.
The only wall held a row of photographs—Jocelyn’s dynasty of Ridgebacks, surrounded by their
ribbons and pedigrees. Ridgebacks are a matriarchal breed; it’s one of their many attrac-tive features.
Put Jocelyn in the alpha position and you have the makings of an advanced civilization.
Queenie of the Serengeti looked down on us, doe eyes and troubled, intelligent brow. It’s hard to
capture a dog’s personal-ity in a photograph; dogs suffer more from the flattening than people do, or cats
even. Birds photograph well because their spir-its are so guarded, and anyway, often the real subject is
the tree. But this was a flattering likeness, and Jocelyn had taken it herself.
Beneath Queenie’s picture, her daughter, Sunrise on the Sa-hara, lay, in the flesh, at our feet. She had
only just settled, having spent the first half-hour moving from one of us to the next, puff-ing hot
stagnant-pond smells into our faces, leaving hairs on our pants. She was Jocelyn’s favourite, the only dog
allowed inside, al-though she was not valuable, since she suffered from hyperthy-roidism and had had to
be spayed. It was a shame she wouldn’t have puppies, Jocelyn said, for she had the sweetest disposition.
Jocelyn had recently spent more than two thousand dollars on vet bills for Sahara. We were glad to hear
this; dog breeding, we’d heard, could make a person cruel and calculating. Jocelyn hoped to continue
competing her, though the kennel would de-rive no benefit; it was just that Sahara missed it so. If her gait
could be smoothed out—for Ridgebacks it was all about the gait—she could still show, even if she never
won. (But Sahara knew when she’d lost; she became subdued and reflective. Sometimes some-one was
sleeping with the judge and there was nothing to be done about it.) Sahara’s competitive category was
Sexually Al-tered Bitch.
The barking outside ascended into hysteria. Sahara rose and walked stiffly to the screen door, her ridge
bristling like a tooth-brush.
“Why isn’t Knightley more appealing?” Jocelyn began. “He has so many good qualities. Why don’t I
warm to him?”
We could hardly hear her; she had to repeat herself. The con-ditions were such, really, that we should
have been discussing Jack London.
* * *
Most of what we knew about Jocelyn came from Sylvia. Little Jocelyn Morgan and little Sylvia Sanchez
had met at a Girl Scout camp when they were eleven years old, and they were fifty-something now.
They’d both been in the Chippewa cabin, work-ing on their wood-lore badges. They had to make
campfires from tepees of kindling, and then cook over them, and then eat what they’d cooked; the
requirement wasn’t satisfied unless the Scout cleaned her plate. They had to identify leaves and birds and
poi-sonous mushrooms. As if any one of them would ever eat a mush-room, poisonous or not.
For their final requirement they’d been taken in teams of four to a clearing ten minutes off and left to find
their own way back. It wasn’t hard, they’d been given a compass and a hint: The din-ing hall was
southwest of them.
Camp lasted four weeks, and every Sunday Jocelyn’s parents drove up from the city—three and a half
hours—to bring her the Sunday funnies. “Everyone liked her anyway,” Sylvia said. This was hard to
believe, even for us, and we all liked Jocelyn a ton. “She was attractively ill informed.”
Jocelyn’s parents adored her so, they couldn’t bear to see her unhappy. She’d never been told a story
with a sad ending. She knew nothing about DDT or Nazis. She’d been kept out of school during the
Cuban missile crisis because her parents didn’t want her learning we had enemies.
“It fell to us Chippewas to tell her about communists,” said Sylvia. “And child molesters. The Holocaust.
Serial killers. Men-struation. Escaped lunatics with hooks for hands. The Bomb. What had happened to
the real Chippewas.
“Of course, we didn’t have any of it right. What a mash of misinformation we fed her. Still, it was realer
than what she got at home. And she was very game, you had to admire her.
“It all came crashing down on the day we had to find our way back to camp. She had this paranoid
fantasy that while we were hiking and checking our compass, they were packing up and moving out. That
we would come upon the cabin and the dining hall and the latrines, but all the people would be gone.
Even more, that there would be dust and spider webs and crumbling floorboards. It would be as if the
camp had been abandoned for a hundred years. We might have told her too manyTwilight Zone plots.
“But here’s the weird part. On the last day, her parents came to pick her up, and on the drive back, they
told her that they’d gotten divorced over the summer. In fact, she’d been sent off just for this purpose.
All those Sunday drives together bringing the funnies, and they couldn’t actually stand each other. Her
dad was living in a hotel in San Francisco and had been the whole month she was gone. ‘I eat all my
meals in the hotel restaurant,’ he told her. ‘I just come down for breakfast and order whatever catches
my fancy.’ Jocelyn said he made it sound as though that were the only reason he’d moved out, because
restaurant eating would be so swell. She felt she’d been traded for shirred eggs.”
One day several years later he called her to say he had a touch of the flu. Nothing for her to worry her
darling head about. They had tickets to a baseball game, but he didn’t think he could make it, he’d have
to take a rain check. Go, Giants! It turned out the flu was a heart attack. He didn’t get to the hospital
until he was al-ready dead.
“No wonder she grew up a bit of a control freak,” Sylvia said. With love. Jocelyn and Sylvia had been
best friends for more than forty years.
There’s no heat with Mr. Knightley,” Allegra said. She had a very expressive face, like Lillian Gish in a
silent movie. She frowned when she was making a point, had done this since she was a tiny girl. “Frank
Churchill and Jane Fairfax meet in secret and quar-rel with each other and make it up and lie to everyone
they know. You believe they’re in love because they behave so badly. You can imagine sex. You never
feel that with Mr. Knightley.” Allegra had a lullaby voice, low, yet penetrating. She was often impatient
with us, but her tones were so soothing we usually realized it only afterward.
“That’s true,” Bernadette agreed. Behind the lenses of her tiny glasses her eyes were round as pebbles.
“Emma is always saying how reserved Jane is, even Mr. Knightley says so, and he’s so perceptive about
everyone. But she’s the only one in the whole book”—the lights came on, which made Bernadette jump,
but she didn’t miss a word for it—”who ever seems desperately in love. Austen says that Emma and Mr.
Knightley make an unexceptional marriage.” She paused reflectively. “Clearly she approves. I expect the
word ‘unexceptional’ meant something different in Austen’s day. Like, nothing to be ashamed of.
Noth-ing to set tongues wagging. Neither reaching too high nor stoop-ing too low.”
Light poured like milk over the porch. Several large winged insects hurled themselves against the
screens, frantic to find it, follow it to the source. This resulted in a series of thumps, some of them loud
enough to make Sahara growl.
“No animal passion,” said Allegra.
Sahara turned. Animal passion. She had seen things in the kennels. Things that would make your hair
stand on end.
“No passion at all.” Prudie repeated the word, but pronounc-ing it as if it were French. Pah-see-ohn.
Because she taught French, this wasn’t as thoroughly obnoxious as it might have been.
Not that we liked it. The month before, Prudie’s beautician had removed most of her eyebrows; it gave
her a look of steady surprise. We couldn’t wait for this to go away.“Sans passion, amour n’est rien,”
Prudie said.
“Après moi, le deluge,”Bernadette answered, just so Prudie’s words wouldn’t fall into a silence that
might be mistaken for chilly. Bernadette was really too kind sometimes.
Nothing smelly outside. Sahara came away from the screen door. She leaned into Jocelyn, sighing. Then
she circled three times, sank, and rested her chin on the gamy toe of Jocelyn’s shoe. She was relaxed but
alert. Nothing would get to Jocelyn that didn’t go through Sahara first.
“If I may.” Grigg cleared his throat, held up his hand. “One thing I notice aboutEmma is that there’s a
sense of menace.” He counted off on his fingers. He wore no ring. “The violent Gyp-sies. The
unexplained pilferings. Jane Fairfax’s boat accident. All Mr. Woodhouse’s worries. There’s a sense of
threat hovering on the edges. Casting its shadow.”
Prudie spoke quickly and decisively. “But Austen’s whole point is that none of those things is real. There
is no real threat.”
“I’m afraid you’ve missed the whole point,” said Allegra.
Grigg said nothing further. His eyelashes dropped to his cheeks, making his expression hard to read. It
fell to Jocelyn as hostess to change the subject.
“I read once that theEmma plot, the humbling of a pretty, self-satisfied girl, is the most popular plot of all
time. I think it was Robertson Davies who said so. That this was the one story every-one was bound to
enjoy.”
* * *
When Jocelyn was fifteen, she met two boys while playing tennis at the country club. One of them was
named Mike, the other Steven. They were, at first glance, average boys. Mike was taller and thinner,
with a prominent Adam’s apple and glasses that turned to headlights in the sun. Steven had better
shoulders and a nice smile but a fat ass.
Mike’s cousin Pauline was visiting from New York, and they introduced themselves to Jocelyn because
they needed a fourth for doubles. Jocelyn had been working on her serve with the club pro. She wore
her hair in a high ponytail that summer, with bangs like Sandra Dee inTake Her, She’s Mine. She had
breasts, pointy at first, but now rounding. Her mother had bought her a two-piece bathing suit with
egg-cup shaping, in which Jocelyn was exquisitely self-conscious. But her best feature, she always
believed, had been her serve. Her toss that day was perfect, tak-ing her to full stretch, and she spun the
ball into the service court. It seemed she couldn’t miss. Her spirits, as a consequence, were high and
wild.
Neither Mike nor Steven spoiled things by being particularly competitive. They split games sometimes,
and sometimes they didn’t; no one really kept score but Jocelyn, and she did so only privately. They
traded partners. Pauline was such a little snot, ac-cusing people of foot faults in a friendly game, that
Jocelyn looked better and better by comparison. Mike said she was a good sport, and Steven said she
wasn’t a bit stuck-up, not like most girls.
They continued to meet and play after Pauline went back home, even though three was such an
awkward number. Some-times when they rallied, Mike or Steven would try to run from one side of the
net to the other to play on both teams at once. It
never worked and they never stopped trying. Eventually some adult would accuse them of not being
serious and throw them off the court.
After tennis, they’d change into their swimsuits and meet at the pool. Everything about Jocelyn changed
with her clothes. When she came out of the women’s locker room, her movements were cramped and
tight. She’d wrap a towel around her waist and remove it only to slip into the water.
Still, she liked when they stared; she felt the pleasure of it all over her skin. They came in after her,
touching her under the water, where no one could see. One or the other would swim down to put his
head between her legs and surface with her knees hooked around his shoulders, the water from her
ponytail streaming into the cup over her breast. One day one of them, she never knew which, pulled the
knot of her top loose. She caught it just as it began to drop. She could have stopped this with a word,
but she didn’t. She felt dangerous, brazen. She felt all lit up.
She had no desire for anything further. She didn’t actually like Mike or Steven that much, and certainly
not in that way. When she lay in her bed or the bath, touching herself more intimately and successfully
than they did, the boy she pictured was Mike’s older brother, Bryan. Bryan went to college and worked
sum-mers as a lifeguard at the pool. He looked the way a lifeguard looks. Mike and Steven called him
the boss, he called them the squirts. He had never spoken to Jocelyn, possibly didn’t even know her
name. He had a girlfriend who rarely got wet, but lay on a beach chair reading Russian novels and
drinking Coca- Cola. You could tell how many she’d drunk from the maraschino cherries lined up along
her napkin.
In late July there was a dance, and it was girl-ask-boy. Jocelyn asked Mike and Steven both. She
thought they knew this, as-sumed they would talk about it. They were best friends. She thought it would
hurt someone’s feelings if she asked one and not the other, and she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She had a
strapless sundress to wear; she and her mother went out and bought a strapless bra.
Mike showed up at her house first, in a white shirt and a sports jacket. He was nervous; they were both
nervous; they needed Steven to arrive. But when he did, Mike was shocked. Hurt. Furi-ous. “You two
have a great time,” he said. “I got other things to do.”
Jocelyn’s mother drove Jocelyn and Steven to the club and wouldn’t be picking them up again until
eleven o’clock. Three whole hours had to pass somehow. Glass torches lit the pathway to the clubhouse,
and the landscape flickered. There were rose wreaths and pots of ivy animals. The air cool and soft, the
moon sliding down the sky. Jocelyn didn’t want to be with Steven. It felt like a date now, and she didn’t
want to date him. She was rude and miserable, wouldn’t dance, hardly talked, wouldn’t take off her
cardigan. She was afraid he might get the wrong idea, so she was trying to clarify things. Eventually he
asked some other girl to dance.
Jocelyn went out by the pool and sat in one of the lounge chairs. She knew that she’d been unforgivably
mean to Steven, wished she’d never met him. She wasn’t wearing stockings and her legs were cold. She
could smell her own Wind Song perfume mixing with the chlorine.
Music floated over the pool. “Duke of Earl.” “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “There is a house in New
Orleans.” Bryan sat down on the end of her chair, making her blood skip. Probably she was in love with
him.
“Aren’t you the thing?” he said. The only light around them came from under the water and was blue. He
was turned away, so she didn’t see his face, but his voice was full of contempt. “There’s a word for girls
like you.”
Jocelyn hadn’t known this, hadn’t even known there were girls like her. Whatever the word was, he
didn’t say it.
“You had those boys in such a fever. Did you like that? I bet you liked it. Did you know they used to be
best friends? They hate each other now.”
She was so ashamed. She’d known all summer there was something wrong with the way she was
behaving, but she hadn’t known whatit was. Shehad liked it. Now she understood that the liking it was
the wrong part.
Bryan gripped one of her ankles hard enough so that the next morning she had a bruise where his thumb
had been. He slid the other hand up her leg. “You asked for this,” he said. “You know you did.” His
fingers grabbed at her panties, pushed them aside. She felt the slick surface of his nails. She didn’t tell him
not to. She was too ashamed to move. His finger found its way inside her. He shifted his weight until he
lay over her. He was wearing the same bay aftershave her father had worn.
“Bryan?” His girlfriend’s voice, over by the clubhouse. “True Love Ways” playing on the
turntable—Jocelyn would never like Buddy Holly again, even though he was dead, poor guy—the
girlfriend calling. “Bryan? Bryan!” Bryan slid his finger out, let go of her. He stood up, shaking his jacket
into place and smooth-ing his hair. He put his finger into his mouth while she watched, took it out. “We’ll
catch up later,” he told her.
Jocelyn walked down the watery path through the torches and out to the road. The country club was in
the country, up a long hill. It took twenty minutes to drive there. The roads twisted and had no sidewalks
and were surrounded by trees. Jocelyn started home.
She was wearing sandals with one-inch heels. She’d painted her toenails, and in the moonlight, her toes
looked as if they’d been dipped in blood. Already there was a raw spot on the back of one heel. She
was very frightened, because ever since camp she’d lived in a world with communists and rapists and
serial killers. Whenever she heard a car coming, she stepped away from the road and crouched until it
passed. The headlights were like searchlights. She pretended she was someone innocent, someone who
hadn’t asked for anything. She pretended she was a deer. She pretended she was a Chippewa. She
pretended she was on the Trail of Tears, an event Sylvia had recounted in vivid if erroneous detail.
She thought she’d be home before her mother left to pick them up. All she had to do was go downhill.
But in the beam of a passing car, suddenly she didn’t recognize anything. At the bot-tom of the hill was a
crossroads she never came to, and now she was going up, which she shouldn’t be doing, even for a short
time. There were no street signs, no houses. She kept going for-ward only because she was too ashamed
to go back. Hours passed. Finally she found a small gas station, which was closed, and a pay phone,
which was working. As she dialled she was sure her mother wouldn’t answer. Her mother might be out,
franti-cally looking for her. She might have packed all her clothes into the car while Jocelyn was at the
dance, and moved away.
It was midnight. Her mother made a horrible to-do about it, but Jocelyn convinced her that she’d only
wanted some fresh air, some exercise, the stars.
But I think what we’re supposed to see,” said Prudie, “is not the lack of passion so much as the control
of it. That’s one of Jane’s favourite themes.” She smiled and her lips waned.
We exchanged secret looks.Jane. That was easy. That was more intimate, surely, than Miss Austen
would wish. None of the rest of us called her Jane, even though we were older and had been reading her
years longer than Prudie.
Only Bernadette was too good to notice. “That’s very true,” she said. She had her fingers laced and was
fiddling with which thumb should be on top.“Sense and Sensibility is all about that, and it’s Austen’s
first book, but then she returns to it inPersua-sion, and that’s the last. An enduring theme. Good point,
Prudie. Knightley is violently in love—I believe those are the words used, violently in love—but he’s so
much the gentleman that even this can’t make him behave badly. He’s always a gentleman first. Jocelyn,
your tea is excellent. So flavourful. I could swear I was drinking the sunshine itself.”
“He’s a scold,” Allegra said. “I don’t find that so gentlemanly.”
“Just to Emma.” Grigg sat with one foot resting on the other knee. His leg was bent in two like a chicken
wing. Only a man would sit that way. “Just to the woman he loves.”
“And of course that makes it all right!” Prudie cried out. “A man can do anything to the woman he
loves.”
This time it was Sylvia who changed the subject, but she was acting as Jocelyn’s agent; we saw Jocelyn
摘要：

  TheJaneAustenBookClubKarenJoyFowler FORSEANPATRICKJAMESTYRRELL. Missingandforevermissed.Seldom,veryseldomdoescompletetruthbelongtoanyhumandisclosure;seldomcanithappenthatsomethingisnotalittledisguised,oralittlemistaken. —JANEAUSTEN,EmmaPrologue   EachofushasaprivateAusten.  Jocelyn’sAustenwrotewon...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：157 页 大小：486.38KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

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