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A review by sterling8
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye
4.0
Probably 3.5 stars, really, but I'm rounding up because I really, really want Lindsay Faye to keep writing!
Reader, I confess: I've never read Jane Eyre. I've seen one of the movie adaptations and I know the general storyline, which was enough for me to see the parallel story that Faye wrote.
The story of Jane Steele begins with her living in a cottage outside a great manor house, although she is given to understand that the estate is actually hers. When her mother dies, however, she's sent off to a hideous boarding school by her aunt, who still controls the house and grounds. After eventually escaping, she supports herself in London along with her very good friend Clarke (also from the boarding school) by writing pulpy broadsides and sappy eulogies.
A notice that the estate where she grew up has been placed under new ownership drives Jane to pose as a tutor so that she can case the place and decide on her next moves. The house has been inhabited by Mr. Thornfield, a fine strapping gent with a shock of white hair and his Sikh staff, all of whom just arrived from India.
Jane has a pretty firm sense of right and wrong, and in this case she acts upon her moral sensibility in ways that prove fatal to several miscreants. There's a case for self-defense in at least one case, and Jane's murders seem quite justified to the reader, although Jane knows herself for a monster.
In this way, Jane Steele is a lurid piece of pulp fiction, but it seems that Faye loves writing lurid pulp fiction and I frankly love to read her stylings.
You probably won't find anything too surprising in this book, and that will be the case whether you've read Jane Eyre or not. There's a pretty decent effort at a romance, and Jane can always resolutely rescue herself- she is the furthest thing from a damsel in distress. There are missing jewels, a lost heiress, a hint of lesbian romance that frankly felt more believable to me than the featured one, and all in all it was a lot of fun.
However, I just did not attach to Jane the way I did to Timothy Wilde and his brother Val, and while the storyline of Jane Eyre is a good one, I probably don't know enough about it to see all the clever subversions that Faye has undoubtedly included. I don't feel a need to return to these characters.
Reader, I confess: I've never read Jane Eyre. I've seen one of the movie adaptations and I know the general storyline, which was enough for me to see the parallel story that Faye wrote.
The story of Jane Steele begins with her living in a cottage outside a great manor house, although she is given to understand that the estate is actually hers. When her mother dies, however, she's sent off to a hideous boarding school by her aunt, who still controls the house and grounds. After eventually escaping, she supports herself in London along with her very good friend Clarke (also from the boarding school) by writing pulpy broadsides and sappy eulogies.
A notice that the estate where she grew up has been placed under new ownership drives Jane to pose as a tutor so that she can case the place and decide on her next moves. The house has been inhabited by Mr. Thornfield, a fine strapping gent with a shock of white hair and his Sikh staff, all of whom just arrived from India.
Jane has a pretty firm sense of right and wrong, and in this case she acts upon her moral sensibility in ways that prove fatal to several miscreants. There's a case for self-defense in at least one case, and Jane's murders seem quite justified to the reader, although Jane knows herself for a monster.
In this way, Jane Steele is a lurid piece of pulp fiction, but it seems that Faye loves writing lurid pulp fiction and I frankly love to read her stylings.
You probably won't find anything too surprising in this book, and that will be the case whether you've read Jane Eyre or not. There's a pretty decent effort at a romance, and Jane can always resolutely rescue herself- she is the furthest thing from a damsel in distress. There are missing jewels, a lost heiress, a hint of lesbian romance that frankly felt more believable to me than the featured one, and all in all it was a lot of fun.
However, I just did not attach to Jane the way I did to Timothy Wilde and his brother Val, and while the storyline of Jane Eyre is a good one, I probably don't know enough about it to see all the clever subversions that Faye has undoubtedly included. I don't feel a need to return to these characters.