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Cast: Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Hugh Dancy, Amy Brenneman, Emily Blunt, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, with Lynn Redgrave.

Director: Robin Swicord.

Somewhere someone has declared that there’s hardly a corner of the human heart that the great English writer Jane Austen hasn’t plumbed. None of her novels mentions the special joy to be had in surrendering to a pint of butter brickle, but you get the idea. In ‘‘The Jane Austen Book Club,” six people gather to sit at Jane’s spiritual knee, talking great literature, but also seeking clarity in their own lives.

This club has been recruited from a core of emotionally quivering acquaintances, led by the much-married Bernadette (Kathy Baker). It includes the recently bereaved Jocelyn (Maria Bello), sad-sack Sylvia (Amy Brennerman) and Sylvia’s lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace). Bernadette pulls in a promising stranger Prudie (Emily Blunt), a chilly bluestocking not at all certain that the JABC is quite Jane-ish enough for her.

The story throws a hero into the works, young sci-fi geek Grigg (Hugh Dancy), who is so overcome with admiration for Jocelyn that he nearly drinks a votive candle. He is swept into the JABC before he knows what hit him.

Six immortal books — ‘‘Pride and Prejudice,” ‘‘Sense and Sensibility,” ‘‘Emma,” ‘‘Mansfield Park,” ‘‘Persuasion” and ‘‘Northanger Abbey” — and coincidentally, six book club members.

With chapter titles like ‘‘February – ‘Emma,’” the months rotate through disillusion, heartbreak, bone-headedness and sudden illuminations that take the breath away. That’s not just for Darcy, Elizabeth and Emma; their crises are strangely mirrored in the lives of their readers.

Wouldn’t you think that one of these book club members would catch on? But that would violate both the happy conceit of Karen Joy Fowler‘s novel, from which the movie is taken and a great truth of real life as well. The story requires stretching and pinching to fit the plan, with Marc Blucas and Jimmy Smits as the requisite lunkheads. Some familiarity with the Austen classics adds to the fun, which includes Grigg arriving at an astounding insight that stops everybody in their tracks.

‘‘The Jane Austen Book Club” isn’t much cinema-wise. What it is a confluence of happy casting and slowly building good will. Darn if the movie doesn’t pick up its skirts, its pace and its strengths, and fling itself into the arms of a perfectly splendid lovefest finale. It’s as if all the Jane Austen characters leaned out of the pages for a group hug.