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wendoxford's review against another edition
3.0
A real mixed bag which makes rating it difficult.
A fabulous array of women writers using the title of the book (from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre) as inspiration for their stories. This was the most fascinating thread, how the challenge was taken up and run away with in some many ways....obvious, oblique, obscure, transparent and invisible connections that all hit the right notes differently!
A fabulous array of women writers using the title of the book (from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre) as inspiration for their stories. This was the most fascinating thread, how the challenge was taken up and run away with in some many ways....obvious, oblique, obscure, transparent and invisible connections that all hit the right notes differently!
kirsty147's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not usually a reader of short stories, but I enjoyed Jane Eyre, so thought I would give this a go. While I liked some of the stories, I felt that some were only included due to the prestige of the author - Susan Hill, for instance, has never read Jane Eyre! This undermined the whole project, in my opinion.
brontebabeblog's review against another edition
4.0
An intriguing and eclectic mix of stories "inspired" by Jane Eyre. Some have obvious connections; with others you have to look a bit harder. I confess there were one or two which left me baffled. However, overall it's a good collection and well worth a read.
fizreads's review against another edition
4.0
Reader, I married him.
What an iconic line. I love Jane Eyre, at one point obsessed with it (I still am) so reading this collection of short stories in which they re-tell parts of Jane Eyre was just amazing. It fills you with nostalgia of the novel and the characters and with a modern story spin on the story it makes for a memorable read!
Here are some titles that were my favourite from the collection;
Grace Poole Her Testimony- Helen Dunmore
Reader; I Married Him - Susan Hill
A Migrating Bird - Elif Shafak
Reader; She Married Me - Salley Vickers
Party Girl - Nadifa Mohamed
The Orphan Exchange - Audrey Niffenegger
Highly recommend for fans of Jane Eyre!
'Always, always in these stories there is love - whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers - in its many heart--breaking, life affirming forms.'
What an iconic line. I love Jane Eyre, at one point obsessed with it (I still am) so reading this collection of short stories in which they re-tell parts of Jane Eyre was just amazing. It fills you with nostalgia of the novel and the characters and with a modern story spin on the story it makes for a memorable read!
Here are some titles that were my favourite from the collection;
Grace Poole Her Testimony- Helen Dunmore
Reader; I Married Him - Susan Hill
A Migrating Bird - Elif Shafak
Reader; She Married Me - Salley Vickers
Party Girl - Nadifa Mohamed
The Orphan Exchange - Audrey Niffenegger
Highly recommend for fans of Jane Eyre!
'Always, always in these stories there is love - whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers - in its many heart--breaking, life affirming forms.'
whatselizabethreading's review against another edition
5.0
This collection gave me strange dreams, but then, so did Jane Eyre.
bookpossum's review against another edition
2.0
I liked the idea of this collection of "Stories inspired by Jane Eyre". As with any anthology, some stories were better than others. The real difficulty was that it was very hard to see much connection with "Jane Eyre" in most of the stories. Just having someone reading the book for example, doesn't really make the story link to the original book. Others didn't have even so tenuous a link as that.
The stories I enjoyed the best were those that really were a different take on the story: "Grace Poole Her Testimony" by Helen Dunmore, "The Mirror" by Francine Prose, and "Reader, She Married Me" by Salley Vickers. "The Orphan Exchange" by Audrey Niffenegger played with the portion of the book where Jane was at school and made a friend of Helen.
Other stories, such as "The Self-Seeding Sycamore" by Lionel Shriver and "It's a Man's Life, Ladies" by Jane Gardam were enjoyable in themselves, but I couldn't really see the link to "Jane Eyre".
So, an enjoyable enough collection, but not quite what I was expecting. 2.5 stars.
The stories I enjoyed the best were those that really were a different take on the story: "Grace Poole Her Testimony" by Helen Dunmore, "The Mirror" by Francine Prose, and "Reader, She Married Me" by Salley Vickers. "The Orphan Exchange" by Audrey Niffenegger played with the portion of the book where Jane was at school and made a friend of Helen.
Other stories, such as "The Self-Seeding Sycamore" by Lionel Shriver and "It's a Man's Life, Ladies" by Jane Gardam were enjoyable in themselves, but I couldn't really see the link to "Jane Eyre".
So, an enjoyable enough collection, but not quite what I was expecting. 2.5 stars.
perednia's review against another edition
5.0
Perhaps it's a reflection of this summer of anger and fear, perhaps it's a yearning to return to a beloved book, but there are occasions when riffs on a known story provide a rewarding reading experience.
That has been the case with Reader, I Married Him. It's a collection of stories edited by Tracy Chevalier, all based on that famous line from Jane Eyre. Written by a wealth of modern female authors, the stories are far more varied than one might first suspect. Part of this may well be because the idea is not to ruminate on Jane, but instead to take that pronouncement of hers, that she married Mr. Rochester and that she directly addressed her reader, and run with it.
The variety is implicit in Chevalier's forward:
"Reader, I married him" is Jane's defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, "Reader, he married me" -- as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, "Reader, we married." Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester.
The choice of a variety of narrators with a corresponding variety of results shows the beauty of Chevalier's choice in determining the focus of the anthology, as well as the beauty and strength of the source material. There is not a single story here that takes away from the power of Jane Eyre's narrative, even the iconclastic stories. They have a power of their own without taking away from the original, something that is at odds with The Wide Sargasso Sea, the Jean Rhys novel about Rochester's first doomed wife.
Among the women writing about this declaration of the determination to choose one's mate are Tessa Hadley, Jane Gardam, Emma Donoghue, Francine Prose, Elif Shafak, Evie Wyld, Salley Vickers, Lionel Shriver, Audrey Niffenegger, Elizabeth McCracken, Nadifa Mohamed and Namwali Serpell.
The mates chosen by their narrators and protagonists range from a mother's lover to a surly neighbor, from a succession of suitors to a favorite companion. Some clearly have happy endings while others lead to heartache, resignation or even a possible victim of gaslighting.
One reason Jane Eyre endures is the strength of the heroine. She is plain, poor and mistreated by her relatives and the school where she was sent. Her only friend is murdered by the cruelty of their so-called protectors. Yet she perseveres and breaks free, choosing not to stay in familiar straits but to get a job on her own with unknown people.
Once at Thornfield, she makes her own way, endearing herself to the people who matter most, in a most unconventional household. When she again has the choice to stay in a familiar setting with less than what anyone deserves, she again leaves. And when she receives St. John's attention, she hears the voice of the one she has chosen and returns to Mr. Rochester.
Although these stories do not all follow this path, they do demonstrate the ups and downs of a main character who does not want to settle for second best, whether that's what happens or not, and whether they live happily ever after or not.
Charlotte Bronte's life failed to follow the path established by her heroine, but she had some things in common with Jane. She fell in love with a married man, Constantin Heger, husband of the headmistress of the school where she worked in Brussels. Charlotte, too, was plain but inside was not a mouse.
As Claire Harman notes in the prologue of her biography, Charlotte Bronte, A Fiery Heart:
...Charlotte was also struggling with the larger issue of how she would ever accommodate her strong feelings -- whether of love for Heger, or her intellectual passions, or her anger at circumstances and feelings of thwarted destiny -- in the life that life seemed to have in store for her, one of patchy, unsatisfying employment, loneliness and hard work. What was someone like her, a plain, poor, clever, half-educated, dependent spinster daughter, to do with her own spiritual vitality and unfettered imagination? How could she live with the painful "consciousness of faculties unexercised" that had moved her to go abroad in the first place, and that she recognised, from the example of her equally brilliant siblings, not as some sort of freakishness, but as an intimation of the sublime?
Although opportunities for women have, to some extent, changed since her days, some things do not change. It is that recognition that has fired the imaginations of the authors in Reader, I Married Him.
That has been the case with Reader, I Married Him. It's a collection of stories edited by Tracy Chevalier, all based on that famous line from Jane Eyre. Written by a wealth of modern female authors, the stories are far more varied than one might first suspect. Part of this may well be because the idea is not to ruminate on Jane, but instead to take that pronouncement of hers, that she married Mr. Rochester and that she directly addressed her reader, and run with it.
The variety is implicit in Chevalier's forward:
"Reader, I married him" is Jane's defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, "Reader, he married me" -- as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, "Reader, we married." Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester.
The choice of a variety of narrators with a corresponding variety of results shows the beauty of Chevalier's choice in determining the focus of the anthology, as well as the beauty and strength of the source material. There is not a single story here that takes away from the power of Jane Eyre's narrative, even the iconclastic stories. They have a power of their own without taking away from the original, something that is at odds with The Wide Sargasso Sea, the Jean Rhys novel about Rochester's first doomed wife.
Among the women writing about this declaration of the determination to choose one's mate are Tessa Hadley, Jane Gardam, Emma Donoghue, Francine Prose, Elif Shafak, Evie Wyld, Salley Vickers, Lionel Shriver, Audrey Niffenegger, Elizabeth McCracken, Nadifa Mohamed and Namwali Serpell.
The mates chosen by their narrators and protagonists range from a mother's lover to a surly neighbor, from a succession of suitors to a favorite companion. Some clearly have happy endings while others lead to heartache, resignation or even a possible victim of gaslighting.
One reason Jane Eyre endures is the strength of the heroine. She is plain, poor and mistreated by her relatives and the school where she was sent. Her only friend is murdered by the cruelty of their so-called protectors. Yet she perseveres and breaks free, choosing not to stay in familiar straits but to get a job on her own with unknown people.
Once at Thornfield, she makes her own way, endearing herself to the people who matter most, in a most unconventional household. When she again has the choice to stay in a familiar setting with less than what anyone deserves, she again leaves. And when she receives St. John's attention, she hears the voice of the one she has chosen and returns to Mr. Rochester.
Although these stories do not all follow this path, they do demonstrate the ups and downs of a main character who does not want to settle for second best, whether that's what happens or not, and whether they live happily ever after or not.
Charlotte Bronte's life failed to follow the path established by her heroine, but she had some things in common with Jane. She fell in love with a married man, Constantin Heger, husband of the headmistress of the school where she worked in Brussels. Charlotte, too, was plain but inside was not a mouse.
As Claire Harman notes in the prologue of her biography, Charlotte Bronte, A Fiery Heart:
...Charlotte was also struggling with the larger issue of how she would ever accommodate her strong feelings -- whether of love for Heger, or her intellectual passions, or her anger at circumstances and feelings of thwarted destiny -- in the life that life seemed to have in store for her, one of patchy, unsatisfying employment, loneliness and hard work. What was someone like her, a plain, poor, clever, half-educated, dependent spinster daughter, to do with her own spiritual vitality and unfettered imagination? How could she live with the painful "consciousness of faculties unexercised" that had moved her to go abroad in the first place, and that she recognised, from the example of her equally brilliant siblings, not as some sort of freakishness, but as an intimation of the sublime?
Although opportunities for women have, to some extent, changed since her days, some things do not change. It is that recognition that has fired the imaginations of the authors in Reader, I Married Him.
lberestecki's review against another edition
4.0
I love Jane Eyre, so obviously I was very excited about this. Like any collection of short stories there were some stories I loved, a lot of stories that I enjoyed, and a few stories I didn't like. The stories ranged in how much they were based on Jane Eyre, and I think I would have liked the books better overall if the stories all seemed to based on the original material. Some stories were clearly based on Jane Eyre and some were based around major themes from the novel, but they were others that seemed to only be inspired by the "Reader, I married him line", and some of those stories were only barely based on that.
Overall, despite the fact that not all the stories were hits for me, I would recommend this to Jane Eyre / Bronte fans.
Received from Edelweiss.
Overall, despite the fact that not all the stories were hits for me, I would recommend this to Jane Eyre / Bronte fans.
Received from Edelweiss.