The Jane Austen Writers’ Club: Inspiration and Advice from the World’s Best-Loved Novelist

Who better to provide good writing advice than Jane Austen herself? Smith (Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life Dilemmas), Austen’s great-great-great-great-grandniece, deploys the master author’s novels, letters, juvenilia, and even a late poem as lessons in the creative process. Various sections focus on point of view, irony, characterization, central images, dialogue, travel, building suspense, “the writer as sadist” (to her characters), and more. Smith quotes extensively from Austen to illustrate her points. For Austen lovers, the book will be a treat, a chance to luxuriate in some of her best prose. Moreover, the chosen passages aptly support Smith’s points about writing, which she supplements with a solid set of exercises. Smith understands Austen as both a stylist and satirist, and she appreciates the challenges she faced as a “lady” writer, not dissimilar to modern authors who often have to shoehorn their creative work into distracted lives. If there’s a quibble, it’s that Smith uses very long passages from Austen at the expense of shorter but equally cogent snippets. All in all, however, this easy-to-follow book offers sensible advice and is a fine writer’s guide. (Sept.)