Article contributed by Zoë Leonarczyk
A powerful and moving novel that explores the tragedies and triumphs of life, both large and small, and the universal humanity in us all, Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society is destined to resonate with readers for years to come.
We had the pleasure of chatting to debut author Natalie Jenner about her recently published novel, The Jane Austen Society. Natalie chats about how it came to be, writing advice, Jane Austen (of course!), and much more!
You can find Natalie on Twitter and Instagram, along with her at her website.
Hi Natalie! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am a married empty-nester with one child and two rescue dogs, a debut author at age 52, and a lot of “formers”: a former corporate lawyer, a former career coach, a former bookshop owner, and a former stay-at-home mum. I live in a small town outside of Toronto, Canada, on the shore of Lake Ontario, where I kayak regularly and ride around on my ladies’ bike. And I have a writer’s shed in the garden where I regularly escape from my family, much as I adore them.
Please tell us about The Jane Austen Society and what made you decide to start writing it?
The Jane Austen Society is about a group of eight very different people who come together at the end of WWII to save Jane Austen’s house. I tried for years to get published and eventually locked away five unpublished manuscripts in a drawer and moved on to other dreams, including opening a bookshop. Then, three years ago, I started aggressively rereading Jane Austen in order to cope with a devastating health diagnosis for my husband, because I have always found solace in her works. When I had run out of Austen books to read, and books about her, and watched all the DVDs and movies, I looked back and realized I had done a year of what I now call “unintentional research.” At the same time my husband’s health had started to stabilize on an experimental drug regimen, and as we settled into this new normal, I felt for the first time in years both hope and—probably not coincidentally—a new creative spark. I wanted to explore how people move forward after trauma, just like I was having to learn to do, and then one day I just looked up and said to my family, “I think I’ll write a story about a group of people who come together to save Jane Austen’s house.” And I did.
Have you always been fond of writing, or has this been something you picked up over time?
I feel like I have wanted to be a writer for even longer than I wanted food, that’s how long it’s been. My mother says that even before I could read, I traipsed about the house with a little pencil in my hand and would pretend to scribble down musings. I was that kid.
What did your writing habit look like while you were writing The Jane Austen Society?
I don’t have any particular habits or rituals, probably because when I first started writing seriously my daughter was in preschool, and I had to learn to write anywhere and anytime that I managed to scrape together. Someone recently wanted me to film my writing space, and my daughter laughingly said, “but that would be your bed!” So, yes, confession time here: I pretty much wrote this book in the morning from 5 am to 7 am while still in bed. Then I would move to the garden, or beside the pool or the fireplace, or to the dining room table. I gave my husband the home office five years ago when he semi-retired and have not been able to get it back since: hence, the shed.
If you could only read one Jane Austen book for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?
Well you surprised me with that one, because the timeframe changes the answer. Normally I would say Pride and Prejudice, but if I have years to reread it and only it, I pick Emma instead. Many consider Emma the first modern detective novel: you could read it a hundred times and still not discover all the secrets at its core. Novelist Kathleen Flynn of The Jane Austen Project was interviewing me for my audiobook, and she said you can’t see the “seams” with Emma—you can’t see how Jane Austen does it. Happy to spend years trying to figure that out.
What originally led you to Jane Austen and her works?
My mother and Masterpiece Theatre, in that order. My mum had this beautiful 1970s edition of Pride and Prejudice and it stood out to me on our shelves as the only book that came inside a box, with a little ribbon to mark your page. I remember opening it up only for this reason and starting to read, and immediately recognizing my parents on page one (sorry mum and dad!) and being attracted to both the foreignness of the language and the freshness of the banter. It read like a movie to me. I just found it weirdly easy to read—that says something about Austen, not about me. And then when I was twelve Masterpiece Theatre came out with a miniseries of Pride and Prejudice (the 1980 version) and I remember being completely bowled over by Mr. Darcy. Looking back, I think the fact that the heroine in that book, Elizabeth Bennet, is not the most beautiful girl in town, that her physical charms grow on Darcy, and that she never loses her sass, were all things I could relate to or hope for as someone on the cusp of adolescence. I think I found Austen at exactly the right time for me.
What Jane Austen book would you recommend to first time readers and why?
I always recommend Pride and Prejudice because it’s the funniest and the most accessible. It also has, in Elizabeth Bennet, the greatest female character in all of literature. I defy anyone who meets her on the page to not want to immediately be her friend. And in Elizabeth’s love story with Darcy, Austen created the prototype for every hate-to-love romance that has come after. But it’s also a story about how different people need different things, and having compassion and understanding for that. Oh, and money: Austen is always about money and how the having or the lack of it impacts every choice we make, whether we consciously want to recognize that or not. This is a theme that all humans can relate to, no matter where or when they live.
How has opening Archetype Books changed your life?
I sadly only had the store for a single year, because my husband was diagnosed with incurable lung disease only four months after opening. Yet in that year, not only did I make dozens of new friends among my customers and sales reps, but I also witnessed daily how books give people both comfort and connection. I remember when the book Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s retelling of Pride and Prejudice, came out. The first Saturday morning after its release, a woman ran into my store in the middle of a rainstorm, holding the leash to a soaking-wet dog and still wearing her pyjama bottoms under her raincoat, and as desperate for a copy of that book as I have ever seen anyone. And I remember thinking at the time what a great high it is, when you get the book you’ve been craving—the sequel, or the retelling, or the latest John Grisham or Nora Roberts or Hilary Mantel—and you settle into it, and reject daily life, and let time stand still instead. From my year in the store, I remember everything that sold and everything that didn’t, what the sales reps got excited about, how many thousands of books came out each week, and how hard it was to differentiate between and discover them. I think all of that factored into my creative sparking onto Austen and the story of her house—I had learned, intuitively, that for a housewife up in Canada with no contacts into agents or other industry gatekeepers, I most needed to have a hook. Without an immediate, recognizable or exciting draw of some kind, I could fully appreciate from my year in the store that any book I wrote wouldn’t stand a chance of breaking out from the crowd.
Would you consider the careers of lawyer and author to be vastly different, or are they more similar than they seem?
They’re actually quite similar in that, at least from the more passive studying, reviewing and interpretive stance, being a lawyer imbues in you an absolute respect for, and adherence to, the meaning of the text. When you see an entire Supreme Court case turn on the presence (or not) of a comma, you will never be careless with grammar and word choice again. And from an advocacy point of view, successfully representing your client in court requires an ability to convey incredibly complex concepts (you wouldn’t be in court otherwise!) in as simple, understandable and effective language as possible. I know of so many former law students and lawyers who are now successful authors—Kate Hilton and Andrew Pyper sandwich around my grad year at the University of Toronto, and they are two of Canada’s most successful authors internationally. Which can’t be a coincidence, unless they are literally putting something in the water-fountain over there.
How have your reading preferences changed, or remained the same, over time?
Oh, I really love this question. I think the number one way that my reading preferences have changed over time, is that as I get older, voice becomes more important to me than plot. I also reread more as life becomes more challenging. Both of those preferences seem to me to speak to a level of comfort and solace that I increasingly demand over time from books, in tandem with life itself becoming more difficult and complicated. I also seem to have a shorter attention span and for that I blame Twitter. I pretty much blame my Twitter addiction for everything.
What plans do you have for any new books?
I am always thinking up different ideas for books, all of which first start with a really strong sense of place. So right now my creative brain is toggling between Regency England, a film shoot in the Nevada desert in 1973, a rock music festival at the turn of the millennium, and a 1938 real-life days-long hotel-room tryst between Samuel Beckett and Peggy Guggenheim. It’s pretty busy up here (points to head).
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
To write the one story that you absolutely need to tell, because that is—most likely—the one story that you alone can tell, and that will give you an edge in a very crowded market. To not worry about what seems to be popular right now, because the industry is already a good year ahead of that anyway, given how long it takes for books to go from acquisition to publication (usually a good year and a half). But in addition to the story being authentic and uniquely yours, make sure you have some kind of hook—without Austen, I am pretty sure my query to agents would have gone straight to the slush pile. And finally, if you want to be a writer, don’t miss any opportunity in terms of time: the minute the kids go to camp, or off to college, or start sleeping in, sit down and write, because life doesn’t always give us time when we want it. So don’t squander it when it does.
