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tasmanian_bibliophile's review
3.0
‘For there are thousands of Emily Brontës.’
In this novel we meet four characters, three of whom have their own imagined relationship with Emily Brontë. Eileen Nussey James is single, over sixty and a self-professed expert on the Brontës and passion. Marion Pendlebury is, with limited success, juggling her roles as a wife, mother and lecturer. Timothy Whitty, aged, widowed and ill is sustained by his occasional nocturnal visits from the ghost of Emily Brontë, and his correspondence with Marianne. And there is Sharon Mitchell, a young waitress, whose life also intersects with Marianne’s. The dreamers are drawn together at a conference on the Brontës (in Haworth, naturally) organised by Marion, and their lives are changed by their experiences.
This is a delightfully humorous story. The contrast and conflict between their dreams and their lives speaks to both the power of literature, and of the delusion of imagined relationships. Why else would one of them forge Emily Brontë’s signature on a watercolour because it should be there?
Of course, my primary motivation for reading this novel was to feed my own obsession with Emily Brontë. The irony of this does not entirely escape me. This is a quick, fun read for anyone who has ever obsessed about an author, or perhaps wondered about the power of such authors to continue speak to us even when they are long dead in every physical sense.
Stevie Davies is both a Brontë scholar and an accomplished writer of fiction.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In this novel we meet four characters, three of whom have their own imagined relationship with Emily Brontë. Eileen Nussey James is single, over sixty and a self-professed expert on the Brontës and passion. Marion Pendlebury is, with limited success, juggling her roles as a wife, mother and lecturer. Timothy Whitty, aged, widowed and ill is sustained by his occasional nocturnal visits from the ghost of Emily Brontë, and his correspondence with Marianne. And there is Sharon Mitchell, a young waitress, whose life also intersects with Marianne’s. The dreamers are drawn together at a conference on the Brontës (in Haworth, naturally) organised by Marion, and their lives are changed by their experiences.
This is a delightfully humorous story. The contrast and conflict between their dreams and their lives speaks to both the power of literature, and of the delusion of imagined relationships. Why else would one of them forge Emily Brontë’s signature on a watercolour because it should be there?
Of course, my primary motivation for reading this novel was to feed my own obsession with Emily Brontë. The irony of this does not entirely escape me. This is a quick, fun read for anyone who has ever obsessed about an author, or perhaps wondered about the power of such authors to continue speak to us even when they are long dead in every physical sense.
Stevie Davies is both a Brontë scholar and an accomplished writer of fiction.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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