LGBT Book & Video Blog

Reviewed by Ron Charles

WIT'S END By Karen Joy Fowler

Marian Wood/Putnam. 324 pp. $24.95

The Jane Austen Book Club could not have been better designed or timed. Karen Joy Fowler's fourth novel appeared in 2004 at the intersection of two massive forces in American publishing: women's book clubs and the Austen revival. With its sharp wit and clever allusions to Emma et al., the story rotated through a year's worth of meetings involving six members of a book club in California. If the plot was a little slow and tenuous, well, nobody minded because Fowler's portrayal of reading-group dynamics was pitch-perfect, and the sprinkling of Austenia made the whole thing sparkle.  Her new novel, Wit's End, promises the same kind of bookish delight, and, again, it aims at an enormous segment of the reading market: mystery lovers, who will seize upon this novel like Hercule Poirot upon a bloody candlestick.  More of this review of  Little Mysteries @ Washington Post, United States. More on  Wit's End.