Brontë Boy

Next October 10, a new novel about Branwell Brontë will arrive to the bookshelves. "Brontë boy" written by Douglas A. Martin and published by Soft Skull. In the publisher's web, you can find a rather disturbing excerpt from middle of book, regarding Branwell's implied feelings for the young boy he is tutoring, that is, Lydia Robinson's youngest son.

The book synopsis is the following (from the publisher):

The Bronte Boy traces the life of Branwell Bronte, the sole brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, from childhood to his alcohol and opium induced death at the age of 31. As the only son, Branwell is expected to make the fortune for the family, and immortalize the Bronte name. He is given no formal education, but is painstakingly tutored by his father, and writes endless stories and poems with his sisters in their small parsonage home. Haunted by the early deaths of his mother and sister, both named Maria, and the imaginary worlds Angria and Gondal he and his sisters create as children, Branwell is unable to touch his heart's desire: to be a great artist. Forever discontent, he roams from job to job, as painter, railway man, and tutor, constantly writing and sketching. He sinks further into his own disappointment at great expectations, as his sisters spin and fume on the dark moor with the stories that will immortalize them.Douglas A. Martin probes the locus where history and myth collide, and with language as rich and dark as the windswept, rainy moors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, gracefully uncovers Branwell Bronte's almost forgotten lost loves and thwarted talent, while circling around his nameless sexuality. Maintaining the haunting quality of childhood memory throughout, The Bronte Boy is a genre bending exploration of the tragic figure of Branwell Bronte and the dismal, dazzling landscape that inspired his sisters to greatness.

On Amazon we can find a more detailed insight on the approach of the book to Branwell's life:

From Publishers Weekly
In this mannered, tortuous life of Charlotte Brontë's younger brother, Branwell, novelist Martin (Outline of My Lover) offers a tender, tragic portrayal of a doomed artist and homosexual avant la lettre. In Martin's marvelous free and direct telling, Branwell, as the sole son among many daughters (only Charlotte, Emily and Anne survived childhood) is accorded privileges they are not, such as special home schooling by their strict father, curate of provincial Haworth. Branwell also lords over the set of toy soldiers the siblings use in elaborate play wars, creating vast civilizations in poems and plays. The early deaths of their mother and sisters Maria and Elizabeth prove shattering for Branwell, on whose fragile shoulders the great hopes of the house rest. Sent off alone to London to gain admittance to the Royal Academy, he falls continually in his family's esteem, becoming a local drunkard and apprentice to the secretly homosexual freemason society; a last chance at gainful employment, as tutor to a boy in Thorp Green, ends in a scandalous dismissal, and Branwell descends irretrievably into a drug-induced, punishing state of monomania. Though slender, this volume's beautiful declarative sentences are perfectly fitted to this famously imaginative, headstrong family; they bring Branwell Brontë's world to light. (Oct.)
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We at BrontëBlog know for sure that it will be a controversial book. So we'd like to encourage potential readers of the novel to send us their opinions whatever they might be.

Categories: Books, Fiction, Branwell_Brontë