A review by izabrekilien
Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler

emotional slow-paced

4.25

I liked it better than I thought I would. I love Jane Eyre so much that anything that looks like a fictionalised biography or a retelling, I look upon with caution.

 

However, this one caught me right from the start : it begins with Patrick Brontë's cataract operation in Manchester, where he was accompanied by Charlotte. Imagine what it must have been at the time (and that is why, apart from women's rights, I'm so happy to live in the 21st century, even if it's not the best of times) : the operation to remove cataract was performed without anesthesia. The patient was on the table, held in place by two people, and he saw (well, mostly saw, and also knew) the scalpel approaching his eyes to remove the thin membrane that covered them - don't blink ! *shivers* After that, he had to stay in a bed, no light, no sound, no shock for days. Imagine lying on a bed with nothing, absolutely nothing to do but think ? That's what happened in the Yellow wall-paper and it didn't turn out well. 

It was a touching fiction, based on facts for a part, on imagination on the other, and it's easily and quickly read (260 pages in my edition). The story is not told entirely from Charlotte's point of view, we also hear the other sisters, Emily and Anne, Patrick the father, even the nurse, but it's mostly about Charlotte. What is interesting is the writing process, how things that she lived, experiences, heard about, were involved in the creation of Jane Eyre. I could picture the setting, the characters vividly, hear their different voices, even accents.

A very good surprise, that makes me want to read more by this author.