Lynne Reid Banks (1929–2024)

This is a fascinating novelization/biography of the four Bronte siblings, three of whom are responsible for literary masterpieces that still resonate to this day.

While it was a bit on the long side, the writing was never dull. I believe Lynne Reid Banks to have relied somewhat on speculation for some of the events, but she also roots her action in the real letters and documentation that exist for the Bronte family. I thus feel that I've been given a fair view of their personalities and show more lives.

Each person in the family comes across with a distinct tone--ambitious, passionate Charlotte; hermitlike, brilliant Emily; sweet, persevering Anne; and...Branwell...promising but weak. I was so pulled into the story of the three sisters and how their rich inner lives clashed with their narrow circumstances.
Though this book ends with the sad deaths of three of the siblings, I am looking forward to the sequel, which details how Charlotte pushes forward with her writing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sapere Books for providing me with a free digital review copy of this new edition. show less

This was published before the sixties swung (1960) and is the story of Jane, an upper middle class girl of 27 who finds herself pregnant and single. She moves out of her father’s house, into an L-shaped room in a dodgy house in a dodgy area.

Her self-awareness and the way she analyses her feelings and those of people around make the novel transcend its period – although she dislikes Toby’s “useless fund of self-knowledge”. At times she wants to punish herself, and telling her father show more was like a bullfight, “I didn’t want to see the bull killed; I just wanted to know what it would do to me to see it.” There is warmth and humour too, including meeting someone “who wasn’t even the sort of person you could enjoy being rude to.”

It is primarily about different sorts of love, loyalty and friendship, coupled with guilt, fear and thoughts about different sorts of parents and substitute parents. Jane comes to realise she has done everything in the wrong order and is “going to have a baby without ever having understood what love really means”. Later, “I felt the emptiness of fear fill solidly with relief.”

From the first page, it is clear that Jane comes from a “good home” despite, or perhaps because of her detached description of her new and unpleasant surroundings, “It might be rather interesting to talk to one” (prostitute), curtainless windows that make the houses look “like open-eyed corpses” and a damp pavement that “had that sweaty look”.

The analogy of turning a corner in one’s life and the shape of the room could be banal, but is never laboured. I think the main flaw is that most of the major points in the plot are annoyingly easy to spot in advance and although Jane is intelligent and often quite perceptive about people, she doesn’t anticipate any of them. Nevertheless, it generally avoids moralising and sentimentality, even when talking about the “spiritual bleeding” when lovers have to separate too soon after making love.

It is of its time. There is casual homophobia (“disgusting” versus “normal”), anti-semitism, and racism that is sometimes nasty (“an enormous black paw”, inquisitive like a chimpanzee with “an animal smell”) but at other times bordering on the affectionate (the smell was also “oddly comforting and reassuring”). Her initial appointment with a doctor is pretty grim as well and I hope would be equally uncommon now - he even asks about her “acts of fornication”!

Overall, it’s historical fiction that explores universal themes. 1960 is well within living memory (albeit not mine), but this book demonstrates that in many ways, it is VERY long ago.

It's also worth comparing this with Margaret Drabble's The Millstone (a similar situation, written and set at roughly the same time - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38680524) and perhaps Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (written recently, set in the 60s, and featuring a woman struggling, in a very different way, with sexual intimacy, against the zeitgeist of the "swinging" 60s - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/23326931) show less

I adored this book as a child in the early ‘90s and was excited to reread it with my sons. I still love the magical premise of the story, as did my kids. Being able to bring toys to life is basically every kid’s dream, after all.

When I originally read this book 30 years ago, it was a very different time. I’m not excusing anything as ok; it was just different, and society has since learned better. That said, even though I love the story, I cringed and edited all the way through reading show more it with my children. It did present opportunities for educational and edifying discussions about racism, stereotypes, and cultural respect and appreciation.

I’d love to see this series rewritten with collaborators of Haudenosaunee heritage and expertise. It would take a full rewrite, though, to scrub all the problematic bits and reframe certain aspects of the story. It has a lot of good in it, but there’s also a lot that would benefit from a heavy update. show less

‘’You know, Charlotte, I sometimes think - don’t laugh, will you?- that Emily’s strength comes from the moors. She’s like a tree, planted tree, and if she’s uprooted it won’t matter how tough her trunk is, she’ll wither and die.’’

I approached this book with mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension. I have read quite a number of biographies on the Brontë family but I tend to avoid works of fiction based on their lives. With only a handful of exceptions, the writers show more tend to project their own values and perceptions to the sisters with no success. Especially apparent in the case of Emily Brontë, these women cannot become ‘’characters’’. It is impossible. A gifted writer is required for that, Sarah Perry, Daisy Johnson, Diane Setterfield. Lynne Reid Banks is hardly a writer, let alone a gifted one and this book was a frightful disappointment.

In a clumsy mixture of Biography and Historical Fiction, the writer almost turned the family into characters of the most mundane, dated (justifiable given the date the book was published) romance. Exhaustingly detailed in parts that hold little significance and naively simplistic when it had to be powerful and, possibly, thorough. The only part she seemed to get right was the unbreakable relationship between Emily and the mystical English moors. Even this vital characteristic is depicted in a highly exaggerated, dramatic manner. Charlotte takes the spotlight and thus, the narration becomes quite boring. Plain and simple. Not because Charlotte was a boring person, God forbid, but because she is portrayed in such a way.

There is very little focus on the sisters’ work - almost none on Branwell’s who seems to be there just to remind us of a George Best type of man (I love George Best, don’t mind me…) and even less attention on the process of conceiving and giving birth to their immortal creations. The fact that the writer chooses to suggest that every novel of theirs was almost autobiographical is ridiculous, laughable and inappropriate. More emphasis on Jane Eyre, very little on Wuthering Heights (I doubt the writer could understand its implications, themes and importance…) and Anne’s novels may not have been written at all… I feel that this book ‘’wanted’’ to become a Peeping Tom than a serious work of Biography and Fiction. It focused more on what she believed was the sisters’ social and sentimental issues rather than their work and was not interested in that.

In my opinion, the Author’s Note is offensive and derogatory towards the readers, the world of Literature and the Brontë family. Making fun of the family’s course shows little respect and a huge, absurd ego. The way I see it, this book is an extremely failed effort. A true disappointment. A sacrilege.

Many thanks to Sapere Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com show less