Karen Joy Fowler's newest novel is one of those books that unfortunately never quite lives up to the innovative promises of its dust jacket.

As we learn on the novel's inner cover, The Jane Austen Book Club is the tale of five women and one man living in contemporary central California who meet to discuss each of Jane Austen's six best-known novels: Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

While the characters gather only monthly for the six months required to examine Austen's famous oeuvre, life, of course, continues beyond these meetings, and we hear of the various unions, infidelities and marriages faithful to a good Austen plot.

Fowler's six main characters echo the traits of Austen's key players. The idea is brilliant: Gather together Austen's best-loved characters and have them grapple both with each other and with the complexities of contemporary society.

But Fowler never infuses her Austen replays with enough new life to allow them to rise off the page into complicated lives of their own.

The story lines are there, complete with couplings and disloyalties, but we are never really led to care one way or the other.

For example, the sole male book club member, Grigg, calls to mind the steady but intriguing Mr. Knightley of Austen's novel Emma, while Jocelyn reminds us of the backfiring matchmaking intentions of Emma herself.

But as Grigg woos Jocelyn, there is no passion or longing or even surface-level respect; Grigg is simply lonely and Jocelyn happens to be in the picture.

As for Jocelyn, her ultimate acceptance of Grigg reads like a disappointed afterthought: She, too, has merely settled for the most convenient end to her story.

Other members of the book club include Allegra, a high-powered lesbian woman who pines for a past love; Sylvia, Allegra's mother and Jocelyn's lifelong friend; Prudie, a 28-year-old French teacher; and Bernadette, a 67-year-old master hostess and rather repetitive storyteller.

Fowler frequently employs an intriguing use of a first-person plural viewpoint, as if the book club has morphed into a single voice capable of both speaking for all and turning to critique its own members.

Midway through the novel, Fowler offers us just such an example as the group prepares to hold its June discussion of Northanger Abbey at Grigg's house:

"Some of us had wondered whether Grigg would ever be hosting us, and some of us had thought he wouldn't be and were already cross about the special arrangements men always expected: how they never made the big meals, the holiday meals, how their wives wrote their thank yous for them and sent out the birthday cards. We were working ourselves into something of a state about it when Grigg said we should have the Northanger Abbey meeting at his house, because he was probably the only one in the group who liked Northanger Abbey best of all the books so far."

When Grigg later suggests the group continue meeting to discuss Patrick O'Brian, Fowler offers a glimpse at the importance of Austen to the players at hand:

"Grigg had never quite gotten it. If we'd started with Patrick O'Brian, we could have then gone on 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 O'Brian have done this? How? When we needed to cook aboard ship, play a musical instrument, traverse Spain dressed like a bear, Patrick O'Brian would be our man. Till then, we'd just wait. In three or four years it would be time to read Austen again."

Fowler's most successful attempts at social comedy, in fact, are evidenced in this plural voice. Unfortunately, her singular characters lack the depth and humanity we long for.

Jennie A. Camp's reviews and short stories have appeared in "Prairie Schooner," "Colorado Review" and other publications. She lives in Platteville.