133. Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

listened to library borrow on Libby
narrated by Richard Armitage
Unabridged audio (9:55)
2020
309 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished  10/10/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.80 - 16,129 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Post WWII Hampshire, England

First line/s: "He lay back on the low stone wall, knees pulled up, and stretched out his spine against the rock."

What I posted on Goodreads:  A lovely historical fiction set in a tiny village in Hampshire, England, in the winter of 1946, where eight people, all lovers of Jane Austen novels, come together to form a society to preserve the little village where she wrote her last three books.  Full of bittersweet joy and sadness, it was entertaining and delightful to follow the actions and thought of these eight people who had great insight into the mind of Jane Austen and her many characters.

Goodreads synopsis:  Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.    
          One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.