Straight out of a Brontë novel

The Christian Science Monitor publishes a lukewarm review of The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland. However, you decide whether you want to trust a review which has clearly got the very background and beginning of the book completely wrong:

Laura Joh Rowland imagines the Brontë sisters as crime solvers in a mystery that doesn't exactly reach wuthering heights.
If there was anyone less likely to be a spy than frail, nearsighted Charlotte Brontë, it was her shy sister Emily. Yet well-regarded mystery writer Laura Joh Rowland has sent both undercover in "The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë."
Rowland begins the action with a real event: Charlotte and Emily, who have published "Jane Eyre" and "Agnes Grey" [sic] under pseudonyms, travel to London in 1848 to resolve a breach-of-contract allegation with Charlotte's publishers. On their way, they meet up with a fleeing governess who is subsequently murdered. Determined to find the killer, Charlotte and her family turn detective with the help of a dashing young Foreign Service agent. Brontë aficionados will enjoy the frequent biographical touches, but the plot becomes too far-fetched. (Reality check: There's no way a spinster would travel solo to another country with a single man or be allowed to witness a violent police interrogation.)
Charlotte's fictional double life was inevitable, I suppose, since Jane Austen has been solving crimes for ages (apparently being a literary genius at a time when women's educations were indifferent at best is no longer enough of a leap for a parson's daughter). But if Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell breaks out a deerstalker and a magnifying glass, I'm out of here. (Yvonne Zipp)

The allusion to Emily's shyness, however, links well with this article from the Centretown News:

And what about those writers with a reputation for being reclusive?
Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, was infamously shy. J.D. Salinger, author of the great American novel Catcher in the Rye, got into a legal battle when someone wanted to publish a biography of him.
Shakespeare, in many of his sonnets, laments his shyness. During his life, he worked as an actor and playwright, but his reputation fell short of the fame he later gained in university ivory towers. (Anna Sajecki)

Someone once stated that Emily, rather than being shy, was reserved. And judging from what we've read of her and her behaviour we tend to agree with this slight difference.

Now for a couple of, if not weird, unexpected Brontë mentions. From The News Tribune:

For lunch, I'm treated to one of the wonders of the Welsh countryside: the horse-friendly pub. At the Castle Inn, I feel like someone straight out of a Bronte novel as I leap down from my horse, tie her to a post, and head inside for a pint of ale and a hearty meal of fish and chips. (Lynn Parramore)

Of course, fish and chips was the Brontës' absolutely favourite dish, and one they included in each and every novel. There's for instance that memorable scene from Wuthering Heights where Cathy and Heathcliff sit in Penistone Crags eating their fish and chips :P

And this is not the first time that Shannon Matthews's Brontë-related hometown makes it onto BrontëBlog. It still feels weird all the same, although this time the reference is more accurate. From the Guardian:

All the houses were built from very good materials, semi-glazed bricks like iron bars, and deliberately stepped on the hillside back in the 1930s, so that everyone's bedroom window has a view across the Spen valley, which Charlotte Bronte made more widely famous in her novel Shirley. (Martin Wainwright)

Associated Content has an article on arranging home libraries. It sound interesting but, alas, we don't like the filter used:

It would be easier for me to part with some of the classics that look prestigious and somewhat intellectual on one's bookshelves, like the classics of literature, from Charlotte Bronte to Emile Zola. (Norman A. Rubin)

And now for a few blogs. Vulpes Libris gives her opinion on why Rochester is 'odious'. Highly recommended read. Western Civ To Go looks briefly into Shirley in a post entitled 'Feminist or feminine'. And finally Maylivres reviews Jane Eyre in French.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Weirdo