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Charlotte And Emily: A Novel Of The Brontës (2010)

by Jude Morgan(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0312642733 (ISBN13: 9780312642730)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

St. Martin's Griffin

review 1: If any of the works by the Brontes is meaningful to you, this book will appeal. It does give a great deal of insight into the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The writing is often brilliant and quote-worthy, yet the novel is curiously sluggish. It is neither a quick nor a happy read; the original title was The Taste of Sorrow. To be sure, much of the subject matter is terribly sad. All six of the Bronte siblings died of tuberculosis in their youths. Only one married - Charlotte - and she died a year later. So read it for the insights, and keep the tissues handy.
review 2: In this novel Mr.Morgan does it again, he achieves sublime precision to what the Brontë sisters' lives might have been, mastering the art of combining fiction with reality. The res... moreult: this achingly real tale of sorrow.Although not a biographical work, it's incredibly easy to believe his version of the facts. Fiction? Maybe. I think some events described must have been invented, but still, Morgan shows his deep understanding of the time, the place and the people which crossed the path of these three unconventional sisters, making the story astonishingly believable.The book begins with the death of Maria Branwell, mother of the Brontë children, who leaves her severe husband, Patrick Brontë, with 5 girls and an only boy to rise. At first, the story focuses on the surroundings of the famous girls: Charlotte, Emily and Anne, especially in their horrible experience in Cowan Bridge boarding school, where their elder sisters get mortally sick. After they leave the school for good, we observe little by little the way their strikingly different characters start to develop, even more when their paths are separated by their own experiences working as governesses or teachers.It's through effort and patience that the sisters manage adulthood, always sacrificing their only passion, writing, for the greater good; which is always in advantage of their brother, Branwell. A man who lives embittered by envy and a coward to face his flaws, he drags all his family down with him.What I most enjoyed about this book is the possibility it brings to understand what kind of lives lead the Brontë sisters to become what they were and to write the way they did. Charlotte, the eldest sister, always carrying her responsibility, serious, sharp minded, afraid of showing her thoughts, but daring when she needs to. I was proud of her when she confronts her father about her need to write, although she is dismissed like a kid.Emily, unearthly, almost inhuman. She needs nothing, she lives through her imaginary worlds, although she understands everything that goes around her and she is the one to give the good advice without expecting gratitude back. She doesn't have expectations, she only needs the moors and quietness to write to feel complete.Anne, dear, sweet Anne. The little sister, the one left aside, but the one who bears the burdens, the one who sacrifices without complain, the one who makes them a whole being, who keeps them together.Oh, and the bliss of reading about their creative process, how they come up with the poems with the pseudonym masculine names, how Charlotte finds in her real experiences the Jane Eyre she has been nurturing all along inside her, how she gets inspiration in her apparent dull life. Their father, their brother, the curates...everybody is captured in essence in some of their books.I was awkwardly moved until the last page, sublime description of the last years of the sisters, magnificent description of Charlotte's feelings. A lesson to be learnt.Having visited Haworth Parsonage a year ago, and after reading this book, I feel as if the Brontë sisters have become alive, I believe I get the picture, and I understand it. These poor and smart sisters, pitiful and unsocial creatures who seemed to have been born only to suffer, they made their dreams come true, they left their footprint in English Literature.I only wish they could know what their books have become to lots of us, like me, so that their short lives wouldn't seem wasted.I have to thank Mr. Morgan for this new feeling, the urge to talk to the authors, Charlotte, Emiliy and Anne, not to the characters, Jane, Cathy or Mrs Graham.This is his achievement after all.Will be reading anything written by him! less

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