It's all very clever — but not too clever

Let's begin our daily newsround with a new review of Justine Picardie's Daphne. Let us remind our readers that they can read our own review here and they are still in time to enter our contest in which we give away a copy of the book:

Justine Picardie's novel is a story within a story within a story. In 1957, novelist Daphne Du Maurier is coming apart at the seams. Haunted by Rebecca, the heroine of the novel that has brought her fame and fortune, she seeks escape from the misery of her failing marriage in writing a biography of Branwell, the unsuccessful reprobate brother of the Brontë sisters.
Her research entangles her with bibliophile and Brontë expert Alex Symington, a dubious character with connections to literary forgers, who leads Daphne to believe in the possibility of uncovering a literary sensation: that Branwell's work may have been passed off as his sisters'.
In the present day, a young woman newly wed to an older man who, like Maxim De Winter in Rebecca, seems still under the spell of his first wife, buries her unhappiness by following Du Maurier's Brontë trail, hoping to succeed where the novelist failed.
Parallels between the two narratives pile up — but then unlikely coincidence is a major tool of romantic novelists, including Du Maurier and the Brontës, and here it works effectively to underline emotional truths.
It's all very clever — but not too clever — and adds up to an intelligent, absorbing mystery story, a real tour de force all bookworms will love. (John Harding in The Daily Mail)

Lisa Appignanesi's Mad, bad and sad: A History of women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present is reviewed in The Jewish Chronicle. Our very own Bertha Rochester appears:

From Jane Eyre’s “madwoman in the attic” to Victorian ladies prostrated by “nerves” and Freud’s hysterics, through to today’s Valium-poppers, women especially have seemed affected by mental illnesses and have been theorised and experimented on by generations of would-be curers. Lisa Appignanesi here brings together 200 years of the treatment of mental illness and an analysis of women’s experiences to shed light on why we treat women’s madness as we do, and why we still don’t fully understand it. (Sophie Lewis)

It's not the first time that this book is mentioned on BrontëBlog.

The poet Christina Rossetti has been compared to the Brontës several times. Today, The Telegraph devotes an article to the poetress:

She was the younger sister of the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the critic and essayist William Michael Rossetti. It's tempting to see the Rossetti clan – with their precocious childhood journals, their melodramas and morbidity - as the Italian Brontës. Christina, a pious Anglican, suffered ill health from childhood and was disappointed in love. (Sam Leith)

As I Like It reviews Agnes Grey not very enthusiastically. Banana Smothie briefly comments Jane Eyre 2006. Tiger, the Brontës's cat gets a mention in El Rumbo de México, El Comercio (Perú) celebrates the 65th birthday of the film director André Téchiné and comments his filmography, including Les Soeurs Brontë.

En "Las hermanas Brontë", por ejemplo, le reprocharon que resaltara el ambiente frío, inhóspito y sin color que rodea a las futuras escritoras. Lo que sus detractores olvidan es que Téchiné, como autor, es incapaz de entusiasmarse con sus personajes como si se tratara de un 'biopic' celebratorio, a la manera de Hollywood. Es crítico con las Brontë y, justamente por ello, las convierte en la pantalla en seres humanos. (Google translation)

Argentinian actress Marta Bianchi reveals herself as a Brontëite is this interview in Página 12:

Mi pareja preferida, porque amaba formar familias-parejas, eran Caty y Heathcliff, los protagonistas de Cumbres borrascosas.
(My favourite couple, because I loved to create couples-families, were Cathy and Heathcliff, the main characters in Wuthering Heights). (María Mansilla)

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References