A Breath of Eyre
Eve Marie Mont
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: K-Teen/Dafina; Original edition (March 27, 2012)
ISBN-10: 075826948X
ISBN-13: 978-0758269485
In this stunning, imaginative novel, Eve Marie Mont transports her modern-day heroine into the life of Jane Eyre to create a mesmerizing story of love, longing, and finding your place in the world. . .
Emma Townsend has always believed in stories--the ones she reads voraciously, and the ones she creates. Perhaps it's because she feels like an outsider at her exclusive prep school, or because her stepmother doesn't come close to filling the void left by her mother's death. And her only romantic prospect--apart from a crush on her English teacher--is Gray Newman, a long-time friend who just adds to Emma's confusion. But escape soon arrives in an old leather-bound copy of Jane Eyre. . .
Reading of Jane's isolation sparks a deep sense of kinship. Then fate takes things a leap further when a lightning storm catapults Emma right into Jane's body and her nineteenth-century world. As governess at Thornfield, Emma has a sense of belonging she's never known--and an attraction to the brooding Mr. Rochester. Now, moving between her two realities and uncovering secrets in both, Emma must decide whether her destiny lies in the pages of Jane's story, or in the unwritten chapters of her own. . .
"Captivating and heartrending. . . Definitely one for the favorites shelf." --Kelly Creagh, author of Nevermore
"A rich, wonderful, smart adventure, steeped in romance. I fell into this book in the same way Emma falls into Jane Eyre and I didn't want to fall back out again." --Lesley Livingston, author of Once Every Never and the Wondrous Strange trilogy.
The author herself writes about her novel for our readers:
Ever since I read Jane Eyre in high school, I’ve been obsessed with Jane and Rochester’s story. Like many girls, I fell for the romance first, but Jane Eyre is so much more than a romance. It’s a coming of age story about a girl who must learn to trust and love herself before she can give her heart to another. The book also
touches on issues of morality and religion, gender relations, class distinctions, child abuse, mental illness, education, and personal autonomy. It is rich and complex and moving, and that’s one of the reasons I love it.
A few years ago, I began writing A Breath of Eyre because I wanted an excuse to linger in Jane Eyre’s pages, to consider the characters and their decisions from a modern perspective. And what better way to do that than to send a modern girl, literally, into the novel? There is a danger, however, in taking a universally adored story and using it for your own purposes; readers will either love you or hate you for it. And often it will be the most ardent fans of the original who become the most ardent critics of the remake.
Consequently, it took me a long time to give myself permission to take Brontë’s story and make it my own, but once I added an element of magic, I let myself loose and the writing became a joy. While I use some of Brontë’s text verbatim, most of the Jane Eyre scenes have been recreated to show a modern girl’s reaction to being thrust into a nineteenth-century world: how does she respond to using a chamber pot, being without cell phone or computer or electricity, being wooed by a much older man with some very outdated attitudes toward women? And what does Emma learn by stepping into the shoes of Jane, a heroine who is strong, intelligent, moral, and unafraid to speak her mind?
The result is not so much a time travel novel as a coming of age story with a paranormal twist. While Jane Eyre plays a large role, it doesn’t overshadow Emma’s own story. In fact, two thirds of the book takes place in Emma’s contemporary world. Jane Eyre serves as more of a vehicle for Emma’s growth and self-actualization, and her time spent in Jane’s body causes her to reflect on the issues in her own life as she determines the kind of person she wants to be.
I sincerely hope that fans of Jane Eyre will find my book a satisfying and respectful tribute to one of my favorite novels. And for those who haven’t read Brontë’s masterpiece, I hope my book might send them into its pages and that they may fall as head-over-heels in love with it as I did.
Eve Marie Mont lives with her husband, Ken, and her shelter dog, Maggie, in suburban Philadelphia, where she teaches high school English and creative writing. Her debut women’s fiction novel,
Free to a Good Home, was published by Berkley Books in 2010.
Readers can visit Mont’s website at:
www.evemariemont.com.
They can also find her on Facebook:
Facebook.com/EveMarieMont
The author herself writes about her novel for our readers:
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