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Amazon.co.uk Review
Clare Boylan's expansion of Bronte's scrap of plot into Emma Brown is powerfully imagined and stylish, with enough melodramatic twists to keep the momentum going until the end. She is distinctly successful in recreating faithfully an idiom both familiar yet obsolete. Charlotte Bronte left a fragment of a novel at her death, subsequently published under the title Emma, concerning the placement by a rich father of a haughty and unresponsive daughter at a school for young ladies. As with Jane Austen's Sanditon or Dickens' Edwin Drood it has offered later writers the challenge of guessing a dead author's intentions.
Paradoxically, one of the opportunities that such an enterprise offers is the possibility of subverting the apparent direction of a plot-line, or undermining the perceived character of participants in the story and Clare Boylan takes extensive--perhaps too extensive--advantage of her freedom in this regard. A modern author's preoccupations are unlikely to be the same as those of a mid-Victorian and Boylan's story takes Charlotte Bronte's characters into darker milieu, and with a greater explicitness of social detail, than their creator is likely to have permitted herself. Rather like Charles Palliser did with Dickens in The Quincunx, Boylan seems to be trying to strip away the euphemism and restraint required of the great 19th-century novelists to show the reality of the world they mirrored. Students of Victorian social history will recognise elements drawn from Mayhew and WT Stead, among others: indeed Stead and the incident for which he is now best remembered--the purchase of a child--has clearly influenced a key character and plot element.
There is much of Dickens, and perhaps even more of Wilkie Collins, in the plotting, which survives a tendency to the schematic or mechanical to deliver a story that ranges widely through 19th-century England and society. This is a remarkable achievement in many ways. While clearly not the novel that Charlotte Bronte would have written, it is a successful resuscitation of the forms of high Victorian fiction as a vessel for 21st-century concerns. --Robin Davidson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Clare Boylan's expansion of Bronte's scrap of plot into Emma Brown is powerfully imagined and stylish, with enough melodramatic twists to keep the momentum going until the end. She is distinctly successful in recreating faithfully an idiom both familiar yet obsolete. Charlotte Bronte left a fragment of a novel at her death, subsequently published under the title Emma, concerning the placement by a rich father of a haughty and unresponsive daughter at a school for young ladies. As with Jane Austen's Sanditon or Dicken s' Edwin Drood it has offered later writers the challenge of guessing a dead author's intentions. (Paradoxically, one of the opportunities that such an enterprise offers is the possibility of subverting the apparent direction of a plot-line, or undermining the perceived character of participants in the story and Clare Boylan takes extensive--perhaps to )
There is much of Dickens, and perhaps even more of Wilkie Collins, in the plotting, which survives a tendency to the schematic or mechanical to deliver a story that ranges widely through 19th-century England and society. This is a remarkable achievement i (Robin Davidson, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW )
hugely daring...this is living in the mind of another writer...delicious, beautifully written, quite superlative. (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
There is much of Dickens, and perhaps even more of Wilkie Collins, in the plotting, which survives a tendency to the schematic or mechanical to deliver a story that ranges widely through 19th-century England and society. This is a remarkable achievement i (Robin Davidson, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW )
hugely daring...this is living in the mind of another writer...delicious, beautifully written, quite superlative. (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I really enjoyed this book. It must always be a risk to take on and complete something begun by one of the great writers, but Clare Boylan has produced from Charlotte Bronte's fragment, a novel which is both a worthy tribute to Charlotte but also a very good read in its own right. Many of the familiar Bronte themes are here and there is also a sufficiently intriguing and complex plot to keep those pages turning. This novel shows the sharp contrasts between different classes in 19th century society, and also demonstrates well the problems faced by women in that society. However, at its heart is a well-crafted mystery and a cracking good tale. I think Clare Boylan managed a good balancing act. She manages to retain enough of Charlotte's style in her writing that you never completely forget her, but at the same time, she has produced something distinctive of her own.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was new to Clare Boylan's writing, although she is well known and respected in Ireland. When I heard of the concept, taking the first two chapters of an unfinished novel by Charlotte Bronte and completing it, I was intrigued and couldn't wait for the paperback version to come out.
The main part written by Boylan is intelligent, well researched and brighter in tone than the first two chapters by Bronte. I find Bronte's work sometimes bleak and depressing, and although there are very sad and shocking images of the lives of the destitute in Victorian London imparted by Boylan, I felt she only added them to make a point and they did not really capture the mood unlike in Sarah Walter's "Fingersmith". As the story unfolded, you always had the sense that everything would work out fine in the end.
At times, I was also reminded of Wilkie Collin's "The Lady in White". The characters are well rounded but could do with being slightly less predictable in their reactions to events in the novel. Perhaps it's a bit unfair of me to say so, but they could have walked off an Oscar Wilde stage, so two-dimensional were they at times.
All in all, a good, recommendable novel, but one which could do bit a bit more of Charlotte Bronte's grit.
The main part written by Boylan is intelligent, well researched and brighter in tone than the first two chapters by Bronte. I find Bronte's work sometimes bleak and depressing, and although there are very sad and shocking images of the lives of the destitute in Victorian London imparted by Boylan, I felt she only added them to make a point and they did not really capture the mood unlike in Sarah Walter's "Fingersmith". As the story unfolded, you always had the sense that everything would work out fine in the end.
At times, I was also reminded of Wilkie Collin's "The Lady in White". The characters are well rounded but could do with being slightly less predictable in their reactions to events in the novel. Perhaps it's a bit unfair of me to say so, but they could have walked off an Oscar Wilde stage, so two-dimensional were they at times.
All in all, a good, recommendable novel, but one which could do bit a bit more of Charlotte Bronte's grit.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this novel absolutely riveting. Like most gothic tales, 'Emma Brown' is essentially a mystery. Although it is certainly predictable at times, I kept turning the pages until I reached the end.
This adaptation may not please purists, but for those in search of a good read, I highly recommend Boylan's novel.
This adaptation may not please purists, but for those in search of a good read, I highly recommend Boylan's novel.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Further into sexual danger
Take the first two chapters of an unfinished novel by Charlotte Bronte - the Charlotte Bronte - and complete the novel. Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
Beauty and the beastly - a riviting "read"
The Beauty of this novel is in it's language - it's form, and descriptive prose. The beastly is the unapologetic presentation of life for the poor as it was then - grim at best,... Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2007 by Marie
My expectations were high, but "Emma Brown" falls short!!
Charlotte Bronte began writing what would have been her last novel, "Emma," soon after "Villette" was published in 1853, and before she married her father's curate, Arthur Bell... Read more
Published on 8 Aug 2005 by Jana L. Perskie
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