Branwell. Some Reviews.

Here we post some reviews of Douglas A. Martin's book Branwell. A novel of the Brontë brother

Small Spiral Notebook. Review by Patricia R. Payette. We quote some fragments:

Martin portrays the deaths of both Marias as creating a deep sense of irreparable abandonment and loss in young Branwell. Throughout the novel, as Martin leads the reader through Branwell's slow spiral into alcoholism, opium addiction and self-destruction, he uses sparse, haunting prose that relies on well known biographical events while imbuing those events with measured feeling and nuance. The novel evokes sympathy for this only Bronte boy and complicates the sometimes simplistic portrayal of Branwell seen in earlier books about the Brontes. Martin refuses to dismiss Branwell as the alcoholic, arrogant ne?er do well who failed in every way his sisters succeeded. One of the major accomplishments of this novel is Martin's ability to guide us through the events in Branwell's life without making up lengthy episodes of dialogue or inserting abundant, artificial details that might undermine his credibility as a biographer. Instead, Martin carefully and skillfully uses content from some of the same letters, poems, scraps of prose, historical newspapers and other documents that shaped earlier Bronte biographies, but he weaves them together in new ways in order to show us the deeper, richer colors of Branwell's life. He also contributes new ideas to what we know about Branwell challenging some traditional Bronte mythology.
Branwell the novel is consistently heartbreaking and provocative as Martin asks us to peer into Branwell's head and heart, demonstrating how the young poet's life revolved around a series of tormenting desires between his need to find a suitable profession and inability to hold a job, between his social ambitions and his emerging sexual preference, between his gifts for storytelling and poetry and his failed attempt to be a portrait painter, between his desire for familial acceptance and his blossoming masculine ego, and, coloring all of this is the alcoholism and opium addiction that helped hasten his death of chronic bronchitis and consumption at age 31.
Martin's poignant, third person narrative of Branwell's lives also gives us finely detailed glimpses of the more familiar Brontes. Charlotte's stern, disapproving older sister persona, Emily's brooding but loving presence, and Ann's quiet, pensive, spiritual strength are juxtaposed to Branwell's tragic romanticism. As the remote, authoritative father who outlived all his children by decades, and was passive and silent in the face of Branwell's professional failures and public addictions as he struggled with his own failing eyesight, Patrick Bronte's life appears almost as heartbreaking as those of his famous literary offspring who all died of illness before age 40.

In Newsweekly. Review by Richard Lebonte

Branwell was haunted by the early deaths of his mother and a sister, dabbled in painting and poetry but never found his muse, disappointed his clergyman father, and lost a succession of jobs - including that of tutor to the young son of a prominent family. Martin suggests that Branwell's romantic longing for the lad led to his dismissal, but the power of this story derives from how its wonderfully evocative prose style - as hallucinatory and hypnotic as opium dreams are said to be - fiddles with the reality of the Bronte boy's physical desires. Though Martin's deft mix of the biographical and the fanciful centers on the celebrated writing family's troubled only son, this concise novel also delivers a knowing portrait of the domestic dramas that fueled literary accomplishments.

Categories: Books, Fiction, Branwell_Brontë