Emma Tennant

Further on books, there was a new one published last spring that because of the author's history deserves a mention.

Emma Tennant seems to specialise in sequels. She has written several to Jane Austen books and a couple of them to Brontë novels.

The newest one is Heathcliff's Tale published in April 2005. It takes the reader both back to Wuthering Heights and the Haworth Parsonage uniting fiction and fact. This is how Amazon.co.uk summarises it:

Emma Tennant's new novel, Heathcliff's Tale, brings together a chilling ghost story, a literary mystery, and a satire of Bronte academic studies. It is the story of the haunting of Henry Newby, a hapless young lawyer despatched to Haworth Parsonage shortly after the death of Emily Bronte to retrieve a novel by Ellis Bell for his uncle, publisher of Wuthering Heights. He soon finds himself adrift in a sea of possibilities: are the pages which burn on the study fire the work of fiction which his uncle awaits, or, as he believes, do they comprise the confessions of a wicked man, a murderer who has brought destruction and misery to all he meets? Who is this Heathcliff who spills his black soul among the flames and ashes? Fact and fiction are intertwined as we are confronted with the enigma of Emily Bronte. How could a young woman with no apparent experience of passion or knowledge of evil, have summoned up Heathcliff? Can evil be passed from one generation to the next? Or is it born out of deprivation and despair? Does it linger, long after the death of the evil-doer - and can it haunt chillingly through the pages of a book? Heathcliff's Tale is grippingly atmospheric and a rattling good read, and should appeal to the general reader, literary aficionado and ghost story enthusiast alike.

It seems to have had a nice reception among readers too.

The other Brontë book by Emma Tennant is Adèle - Jane Eyre's Hidden Story:

The daughter of a celebrated Parisian actress, Adèle is a homesick, forlorn eight-year-old when first brought to Thornfield Hall by Edward Fairfax Rochester, her mother's former lover. Lonely and ill at ease in the unfamiliar English countryside, she longs to return to the glitter of Paris ... and to the mother who has been lost to her. But a small ray of sunshine brightens her eternal gloom when a stranger arrives to care for her: a serious yet intensely loving young governess named Jane Eyre.
As time passes, Adèle watches with wonder as an unexpected romance blossoms between her governess and her guardian -- even as her curiosity leads her deeper into the shadowy manor, toward the dark and terrible secret that is locked away in a high garret. And on Jane and Rochester's wedding day, it is Adèle who brings about the fiery catastrophe that will shatter her "family" and send her fleeing, frightened and alone, back to Paris.

We are wondering whether she will eventually write one more sequel to one of Anne's novels juts to make it 3 out of 3.

Categories: Books, Jane_Eyre, Wuthering_Heights, Charlotte_Brontë, Emily_Brontë