- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: The Women's Press Ltd (1 April 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 070435067X
- ISBN-13: 978-0704350670
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product Description
Product Description
A bittersweet look at passion, academia, romance and illusion in which four dreamers pursue their own solitary paths until a routine conference brings them together with profound and comic results. From the author of CLOSING THE BOOK and BOY BLUE.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I loved this novel. It was funny and poignant and atmospheric and made me laugh out loud at times. In places, as a satire of academia, it rivalled David Lodge's SMALL WORLD and TRADING PLACES. Yet it was also descriptive and lyrical and made me want to re-read all of the Brontes' works and take a trip to the Moors. Funny, 'unputdownable', strange, brilliant and quirky. Am now thinking of reading all of her other novels which I've yet to try.
Format:Paperback
My title says it all, think I would have enjoyed this more if I were a Bronte fan. I am not and so found this book a bit longwinded in places. Other parts were easier for me to relate to and therefore more compelling.
Format:Paperback
In this novel we meet four characters, three of whom have their own imagined relationship with Emily Brontė. Eileen Nussey James is single, over sixty and a self-professed expert on the Brontės and passion. Marion Pendlebury is, with limited success, juggling her roles as a wife, mother and lecturer. Timothy Whitty, aged, widowed and ill is sustained by his occasional nocturnal visits from the ghost of Emily Brontė, and his correspondence with Marianne. And there is Sharon Mitchell, a young waitress, whose life also intersects with Marianne's. The dreamers are drawn together at a conference on the Brontės (in Haworth, naturally) organised by Marion, and their lives are changed by their experiences.
This is a delightfully humorous story. The contrast and conflict between their dreams and their lives speaks to both the power of literature, and of the delusion of imagined relationships. Why else would one of them forge Emily Brontė's signature on a watercolour because it should be there?
Of course, my primary motivation for reading this novel was to feed my own obsession with Emily Brontė. The irony of this does not entirely escape me. This is a quick, fun read for anyone who has ever obsessed about an author, or perhaps wondered about the power of such authors to continue speak to us even when they are long dead in every physical sense.
Stevie Davies is both a Brontė scholar and an accomplished writer of fiction.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
This is a delightfully humorous story. The contrast and conflict between their dreams and their lives speaks to both the power of literature, and of the delusion of imagined relationships. Why else would one of them forge Emily Brontė's signature on a watercolour because it should be there?
Of course, my primary motivation for reading this novel was to feed my own obsession with Emily Brontė. The irony of this does not entirely escape me. This is a quick, fun read for anyone who has ever obsessed about an author, or perhaps wondered about the power of such authors to continue speak to us even when they are long dead in every physical sense.
Stevie Davies is both a Brontė scholar and an accomplished writer of fiction.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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