Burning bright (2007)

Burning Bright follows the Kellaway family as they leave behind tragedy (the accidental death of their son and brother) in rural Dorset and come to late 18th-century London. As they move in next door to the radical painter/poet William Blake, and take up work for a near-by circus impresario, the youngest family member gets to know a girl his age. Embodying opposite characteristics – Maggie Butterfield is a dark-haired, streetwise extrovert, Jem Kellaway a quiet blond introvert – the children form a strong bond while getting to know their unusual neighbor and his wife. Jem’s sister is besotted with the son of the circus owner, who leads her astray and gets her pregnant. The family leaves the city behind to return to the country.

Set against the backdrop of a city nervous of the revolution gone sour across the Channel in France, Burning Bright explores the states of innocence and experience just as Blake takes on similar themes in his best-known poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

A little slow moving. A big book with not much happening! ( )

a good read ( )

Another superb book by Chevalier. Totally original. Set in the late 1700's, a rural family moves to London to follow a job offer for the husband doing work as a carpenter for a circus. The husband is an expert chairmaker and the carpenter work is beneath him but provides good income and London provides excitement for all of the family. Next door lives the famous writer & revoluntionist William Blake. The families' lives become entwined with each other along with another family, the Butterfields. I didn't expect the story to end the way it did but I still enjoyed it very much. ( )

Read my review at http://talesfromfoxglovecottage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/summer-reading-part-2.htm... ( )

Unlike the 'Virgin Blue' and 'The Girld with a Pearl Earring', this book just didn't do it for me - it doesn't deal directly with William Blake. Instead, it circumvulates around, narrating the lives of the Kellaway family, drawing from 'Songs of Innocence/Experience' as a time marker for the childrens' life experience in London. Blake seems to be like a father figure to the children, but with no depth as to his work, his daily occupations or his character. I would have preferred a more direct narrative, ideally, a first person one. This book has less depth historically than the other two novels I've read of hers, and, I am afraid to say, I am done reading her books for a while. Maybe because I've read them all at a specific time in my life, or just because I've grown out of her writing - maybe I'll come back to her work at some point, who knows! ( )