ABRUPTO

16:49 (JPP)

O ABRUPTO FEITO PELOS SEUS LEITORES: SOBRE KAREN JOY FOWLER, THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

” Trata-se de um bom antídoto à neura generalizada embora e infelizmente amplamente justificada. (…) Algumas mulheres, umas na casa dos 50 anos e outras a chegar aos 30 anos, e um homem acabado de chegar aos quarenta anos, que gosta de ficção científica e Ursula le Guin, encontram-se mensalmente para conversar sobre os seis romances de Jane Austen. É claro que o homem, que só agora e a propósito destes encontros começou a ler Jane Austen, está apaixonado por uma das mulheres (uma das de 50 para consolo e esperança deste grupo!), mas no final revela-se um entusiasta Austenite. Também é claro que todos acabam por falar mais de si próprios e da sua vida do que dos romances, mas Jane Austen está sempre presente e as histórias das suas vidas parecem tecidas com fios dos ditos romances.

Para além de ser uma leitura cativante, divertida e inteligente, este livro está recheado de frases (ou sentenças) cheias de “pocket wisdom” e óptimas para serem citadas.
‘

“How could I have let myself forget that most marriages end in divorce?”
Sylvia asked. “You don’t learn that in Austen. She always has a wedding or two at the end.” ‘

‘ “ In real life”, said Grigg, “women want the heel, not the soul.” ‘

‘ “ I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem,” Jocelyn said. “ ‘Your twin eyes.’ Don’t most people have twin eyes? All but an unfortunate few? You think it shouldn’t matter. You think how nice the sentiment is and how much work went into it. But the next time he goes to kiss you, all you can think is ‘Your twin eyes’ “ ‘

‘ Why bother to send teenagers to school at all? Their minds were so clogged with hormones they couldn’t possibly learn a complex system like calculus or chemistry, much less the wild tangle of a foreign language. Why put everyone to the aggravation of making them try? Prudie thought that she could do just the rest of it - watch for signs of suicide or weapons or pregnancy or drug addiction or sexual abuse - (…)
(…) Here at school every breath she took was a soup of adolescent pheromones. Three years of concentrated daily exposure - how could this not have an effect?
She’d tried to defuse such thoughts by turning them medicinally, as needed, to Austen. Laces and bonnets. Country lanes and country dances. Shaded estates with pleasant prospects. But the strategy had backfired. Now often as not, when she thought of whist, sex came also into mind.’

‘ You can marry someone you’re lucky to get or you can marry someone who’s lucky to get you. I used to think the first was best. Now I don’t know.’

‘ (…) “ A dance is about who you’ll dance with. Who will ask you? Who will say yes, if you ask? Who you’ll be forced to say yes to. A dance is about its enormous potential for joy or disaster.
“You remove all that - you provide a band at an event where husbands just dance with their wives - and the only part of the dance you’ve got is the dancing.”
“Don’t you like to dance?” Sylvia asked.
“Only as an extreme sport,” Allegra answered. “With the terror removed, not so much.” ‘

‘ “ I don’t read much women’s stuff. I like a good plot”. Mo said.
Prudie finished her drink and set the glass down so hard you could hear it hit. “Austen can plot like a son of a bich,” she said. “Bernardette, I believe you were telling us about your first husband…” ‘

‘ “ (…)You’ve done so many things and read so many books. Do you believe in happy endings?”
“ Oh my lord, yes.” Bernardette’s hands were pressed against each other like a book, like a prayer. “I guess I would. I’ve had about a hundred of them.” ‘

‘ Sylvia was not an happy-ending sort of person herself. In books, yes, they were lovely. But in life everyone has the same ending, and the only question is who will get to it first.’

‘ “ I’m afraid we don’t have the same taste in novels,” Bernardette said (…) He encouraged Bernardette to talk more; he said listening to her would improve his English. A week later Bernardette had added Señor Obando to her Life List.
She was married again.’

‘ Grigg had never quite gotten it. If we’d started with Patrick O’Brian, we could have then gone to Austen. We couldn’t possibly go the other direction.
We’d let Austen into our lives, and now we were all either married or dating. Could Patrick O’Brien have done this? ‘

(J.)