Daphne
Justine Picardie generously sent to BrontëBlog a copy of her book My Mother's Wedding Dress, which includes a chapter called 'Charlotte Brontë's Ring'. Justine Picardie is currently working in her book Daphne, scheduled for May 2008.
Categories: Books, ReviewJustine Picardie - DaphneYou can read Justine's pre-conference thoughts on her own blog.
Date: Saturday 10th May 2008
Time: 11:45 - 13:00(Doors open: 11:15)
Venue: Festival Marquee, Fowey, PL23 1ET
Standard Price: £7.50
Description
Justine Picardie, the author of ‘Daphne’, a novel about Daphne du Maurier, will be talking to Rupert Tower, Daphne’s grandson, and Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, the great grand-daughter of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Daphne’s aunt, who was played by Kate Winslet in ‘Finding Neverland’). They will be discussing the extraordinary legacies - both literary and emotional - of the du Maurier family.
Book Group Session - Reading My Cousin Rachel - With Justine PicardieCategories: Alert, Talks
Date: Saturday 10th May 2008
Time: 15:30 - 16:30(Doors open: 15:00)
Venue: Fowey Hall Hotel, Hanson Drive, Fowey, PL23 1ET
Standard Price: £5.50
Description
Join a ‘book group’ to talk about one of Daphne du Maurier’s Cornish novels with the experts. Only 18 places available on each session. Please bring a copy of the novel with you.
Justine Picardie’s novel, Daphne, is based on research into episodes in du Maurier’s life that may have influenced the writing of My Cousin Rachel.
She will be leading the discussion about this endlessly intriguing book, and asking whether we can trust the narrator’s version of events, and what is the truth about Rachel?
Daphne by Justine Picardie is a little hard to describe. It's about a college grad researching Daphne duMaurier while she was researching Branwell Bronte. Are you following me? The narrator (who remains nameless until the end of her story), let's call her Nar, is married to aIncidentally, BookBath (no relation to our contest) has also posted a positive review of Justine Picardie's book:douchea professor much older than herself. Oh, he thinks he's right smart, he does. Nar loves all things Daphne and is working on a paper about her obsession with the Brontes. Paul, the professor, poo-poos the idea. Daphne is, afterall, just a writer of bestsellers, a romance writer. Paul and Nar grow colder towards one another and Nar suspects Paul's attitude has more to do with his mysterious ex-wife Rachel than anything else.
At the same time, Daphne's own story runs parallel to the narrator's. Daphne's husband, Tommy, has just had a nervous breakdown and her own mental health is questionable. To distract herself she throws herself into writing a biography of the short life of Branwell Bronte. She starts a correspondence with a disgraced currator, a gollum-like hoarder ("my precious") of Bronte documents, J.A. Symington. He's an odd character with delusions of grandeur mixed with periods of extreme self-doubt.
Not a lot happens during the book, no car chases or running from museum to museum a la Dan Brown. The story is told through the letters of Daphne and Symington as well as their own thoughts. The letters hide more than they tell. Daphne's crumbling marriage and her paranoid thoughts aren't revealed to Symington. Symington wants Daphne to feel he's superior to her a mere novelist, when he's actually a thief. I found Daphne so fascinating. She had a family connection to J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. Her family also had a history of depression and mental illness. At times, I wondered how much of what Daphne perceived was real or a figment of her imagination. Echoes of her books and stories are sprinkled throughout the book; some subtle, some obvious. I found myself thinking, "Oh, that's where she got Don't Look Now."
There were echoes of Daphne's stories in the narrator's tale as well. She's almost like the second Mrs DeWinter only with more balls. Her husband's ex is named Rachel. She's much like Rebecca only without the evil. She's a charismatic woman. She was very well written by Picardie. Daphne and 'Nar's ' story isn't exactly circular. It's more like Picardie shoved them and the Brontes in a blender and poured them onto the page. And it works.
Even though, I was left with some questions, I really enjoyed this quiet novel that's not quite a biography. I'm definitely going to read more of DuMaurier's work including The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte. (...) Recommended.
This book was beautiful, haunting, lovely and engrossing - one of those books you can't put down but at the same time you don't want the end to come. (...) The similarities to the constructs of "Rebecca" are obviously present - but the author is not attempting to hide or disguise these in any way - it is clear that Rebecca - both character and book - is a fourth character in Daphne. Each of the characters are compelling and true - you feel connected to their lives and their choices. In the acknowledgements at the end of the book Justine Picardie talks about becoming "utterly possessed by the story" involving the Bronte manuscripts - I can see why! It is a wonderful mystery that is gorgeously told by Picardie. It has inspired me to read further in the du Maurier and Bronte world.Our other winner, Michael, has also sent us his views on The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë:
I have not had time to a write a detailed review of "The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte" but I finished it rather quickly. I very much enjoyed it although I echo the comments from other reviewers who stated CB tended to fall for every man she runs into and as with conspiracy based stories one needs to have bigger suspenses of belief as the conspiracy grew more elaborate. Also, Mr. Rowland tended to focus a lot on the unsanitary conditions of life in mid-Victorian England. She makes loss of references to cesspits, etc. I really enjoyed the scenes of CB walking with Arthur Bell Nicholls knowing inside this is her future husband although this is the only man in the story she does not fall for, the meeting with M. Heger, for me you could how much he was used as a template for M. Paul Emanuel, and her conversation with Mr. Slade regarding Jane Eyre. I very much enjoyed the real historical figures incorporated into the story especially Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Ms. Rowland seemed to capture from what I understand as their personalities and their relationship. Based on your posts, especially regarding the Polly Teale play, Ms. Rowland appeared to capture the popular perception of the personalities of the Bronte siblings. Although I was rather shocked at some of CB's thoughts when she runs into Mr. Slade on the moors and sends her dog after him.Categories: Books, Contest, Fiction
I want to add Ms. Rowland's research into the Victorian era really shined in the book. She was able to incorporate China's humiliation at the hands of the British, the revolutionary agitation of 1848 including the Chartists, the industrial revolution, and CB makes references to her and Mr. Slade as representative of the new and growing middle class. I thought her characterizations of Victoria's and Albert's children Princess Royal Victoria and Bertie, future Edward VII, seemed to be accurate from my limited understanding and of course foreshadowing of their future reputation especially Bertie as the son who would rebel against his parents' morals in terms of his rather promoscious lifestyle and fondness for living the "good life" including smoking. Although she did make one minor blunder when CB was referred to as a "citizen" before Queen Victoria instead of "subject". The epilogue was very poignant and melancholy. (Michael Kim)
Two alerts for this week where Justine Picardie will present her brand new book, Daphne:Calcot Manor Hotel Meet-the-Author Lunches
Monthly lunches followed by author talk and book-signing in this beautiful Cotswold hotel and spa near Tetbury, Gloucs.
Date: 3 March 2008
Justine Picardie will be talking about Daphne at a literary lunch in Calcot
University of ExeterThe correspondence between Daphne du Maurier and the Brontë family - now that would make quite an interesting read. Not to mention the possibilities that writing to someone in the future/past opens up.
Date: 5 March 2008
Du Maurier novel 'Daphne' To celebrate the publication of the new novel ‘Daphne’ by author and journalist Justine Picardie there will be an ‘in conversation with’ Professor Helen Taylor in LT1, Queen’s Building, at 5.00 p.m. on Wednesday 5th of March. She will read from the novel and signed copies will be for sale.
Justine Picardie delved into the Du Maurier archive held at Exeter University and came up with a brilliant new novel, ‘Daphne’. It uses the fascinating correspondence between Daphne du Maurier and the Bronte family to illuminate the story of a young woman, a PhD student in the present day, who is newly married after a fleeting courtship. She is trying to make herself at home in a large house in Hampstead and finds that her research throws up disturbing parallels with her own life…AND - earlier in the afternoon, she will give a talk in the archive itself. This is a unique opportunity to book a place to see Daphne du Maurier’s original manuscripts and to hear Justine Picardie talk about how she used the letters between du Maurier and the Brontes in the novel.
Numbers are restricted to just 20 people so please call 01392 263879 or email libspc@exeter.ac.uk to book your place.
Wed Mar 12 Muswell Hill Bookshop, 72 Fortis Green Road, N10 3HN, LondonCategories: Alert, Books
Reading from and talking about her novel 'Daphne'.
Juliet Barker (author of a brilliant history of the Brontes) has just told me about a piece in the Yorkshire Post about my stint as a literary detective whilst researching 'Daphne'. Here's the link, if anyone is interested... It's a nice twist that the story has ended up in the Yorkshire Post, for as readers of 'Daphne' may have noticed, the newspaper itself -- or rather, its former editor, Sir Linton Andrews -- played a pivotal part in my novel...We pick it up from there.
For her latest fiction, Justine Picardie became a literary detective among the true stories at the home of the Brontës. Yvette Huddleston talked to her.Categories: Books, Branwell Brontë
When writer Justine Picardie came across a literary mystery a few years ago, she felt compelled to try to solve it. It led to her latest novel, which is about Daphne du Maurier, one of the world's great literary successes, and her obsession with Branwell Brontë, one of its great failures.
"I have always been a great admirer of Daphne du Maurier," she explains. "I first read Rebecca when I was about 12 years old and, like a lot of girls, I read it just before Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I loved all of them, but I re-read Rebecca, then I read my way through the rest of du Maurier's books and I found them completely involving and wonderful."
Studying English at Cambridge, her teachers made it clear that du Maurier had no standing in academe.
"At that time, even the Brontës were only just about seen as respectable. I remember one of my university tutors – almost certainly a man – telling me that the Brontës were just 19th-century Mills and Boon."
But du Maurier remained part of her undergraduate reading – although she "knew not to mention her" – and she has been a devoted fan ever since. During the writing of another book, My Mother's Wedding Dress, Picardie found herself intrigued by a story linking du Maurier and the Brontës. "I was researching the Brontë connection with our family – a ring my mother had was supposed to have belonged to Charlotte Brontë at one time – so I was spending a lot of time at the Brontë Parsonage.
"I got to know Juliet Barker, who wrote a wonderful biography of the Brontës, and we became friends. I was with her one evening and I said to her 'this name JA Symington comes up a lot in the papers I've been looking through,' and her response was really interesting..." Barker told Picardie that while she had been researching her own book, there were certain files that she had not been allowed to read, particularly those relating to Symington.
He was a former curator and librarian at the Brontë Parsonage but had left his post in 1930 amid accusations that he had stolen manuscripts from the museum, along with a set of library keys. Although Symington lost his job, he never returned the manuscripts or the keys, and the Brontë Society took no further action against him.
Picardie says that it remains unclear whether the society wanted to avoid a scandal or whether Symington's membership of the masons protected him in some way. What is known, however, is that Symington subsequently fell into obscurity, his reputation further tarnished by his association with TJ Wise, a former president of the Brontë Society.
Wise's name is also associated with controversy. After his death, in 1937, it was revealed that a large proportion of the extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts he had bequeathed to the British Library were forgeries.
Picardie was fascinated by this tale. A further coincidence persuaded her to turn literary detective. "At about the same time, Virago were printing new editions of Daphne du Maurier's books and I was approached to write a foreword to a reissue of a little-known work of hers – a biography of Branwell Brontë."
She was sent an old copy of the book, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, and was intrigued. "The book was dedicated to Symington," she says. "And that was it – I was hooked."
Du Maurier's dedication states that Symington's "life-long interest in Patrick Branwell Brontë stimulated my own, and encouraged me to undertake the present study". Picardie's imagination was piqued. Was Symington a fraud, or a dedicated Brontë scholar whose immersion in his subject had led him to make misguided decisions?
In the late 1950s, du Maurier began a lengthy correspondence with Symington. Picardie knew that du Maurier's own life at this time was quite complicated.
"Her marriage was going through a difficult patch. Her husband, Tommy, had been having an affair and had had some kind of a breakdown as a result. I wondered, for example, whether Daphne might have fallen in love with Symington..."
These were the kind of questions that led Picardie to begin her own book about du Maurier's passion to discover the truth about Branwell and to bring his true worth to public attention.
In childhood and adolescence, Branwell seemed to promise much. In 1840, he took a job on the railways, earning £75 a year as assistant-clerk-in-charge at Sowerby Bridge station. But his drinking and poor accounting got him sacked within a couple of years. Taken on as a tutor to the Robinson family, this also ended badly after his affair with his employer's wife was discovered.
"Daphne du Maurier was a best-seller and a great success, but she herself believed that because of this, she was never forgiven by the critics. I think Daphne was drawn to Branwell because there is something very attractive about rescuing a failure and rehabilitating somebody's reputation. Somehow, you are redeemed yourself.
"A myth has grown around the Brontës that is as powerful and intriguing as their books. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter. The power of that mythic quality to their lives – up on the moors, the terrible school, the death of their mother and older sisters – continues to have an enormous hold over us."
Branwell, in particular, as the one failure in a creative family, draws people in. "He became part of the Brontë myth. A lot of it is true, however – he was an alcoholic and a laudanum addict and he didn't display any of his sisters' capacity for sustained creativity." Many Brontë scholars believe, as Symington did, that Branwell wrote a great novel – it has just not been found yet. Some even think he wrote Wuthering Heights.
"I don't believe that," says Picardie. "But what is true is that he was capable of writing good poems." In fact, some of the manuscripts of his poems were wilfully attributed to his sisters – signatures were forged – because the manuscripts would sell to collectors for greater amounts.
"I think the fascination with Branwell is that maybe, just maybe, he did do something really interesting."
When it came to writing up her own extensive research, Picardie decided on
a novel rather than a non-fiction account. Her decision was influenced largely by her admiration for du Maurier and the Brontës.
"Du Maurier constantly blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction in her work. There was always some autobiographical truth in her novels – as with the Brontës. So, for me, the only true way to do it was to do it the way they did it."
With her novel now published – and it's an absorbing, intelligent read – Picardie's stint as literary detective is over, but her time at the Brontë Parsonage, she feels, was particularly special.
"There's something really potent and unexpectedly vivid about being able to handle the sisters' manuscripts – the paper they actually wrote on. It was the same with Symington's letters and papers. There were times when I would be opening up those files and thinking – nobody has looked at these since they were put away. It's been the most wonderful adventure."
Justine PicardieIt's a very interesting, lively interview where Justine Picardie explains why and how she came to write Daphne. Click here to listen to it.
Mariella Frostrup talks to Justine Picardie about her obsession with Daphne du Maurier. Picardie’s new novel Daphne is a fictional depiction of a period in the writer’s life when she was pursuing her interest in Branwell Bronte, the less well-known brother of Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Justine Picardie tells Mariella how she found her own life reflecting Daphne du Maurier’s literary quest.
Daphne: Justine Picardie
Publisher: Bloomsbury
The book:The coincidence is indeed amazing. Although the American market has to wait until August for Daphne, the novel is released in the UK next Monday March 3rd. Expect a review of it here on BrontëBlog soon!
'Daphne' by Justine Picardie
The buyer:
Robert Fox
The deal
Robert Fox options Justine Picardie's "Daphne," a tale of author Daphne du Maurier's midlife crises and literary obsession with the Brontës, told against the haunting backdrop of her classic novel "Rebecca."
The players
Fox (executive producer of "Atonement" and "Closer," producer of "The Hours," "Notes on a Scandal" and "Iris") producing. Picardie represented on literary rights by Grainne Fox at Ed Victor Limited in London and on film rights by Geoffrey Sanford at RWSH literary agency in Los Angeles. The book will be published by Bloomsbury USA in August.
The back story
The path from book to screen can be filled with twists and turns, false starts and random luck. But sometimes the path to an option deal -- the beginning of the process -- is no less surprising. Consider Picardie's forthcoming novel, which begins in 1957 as Du Maurier's marriage is falling apart. Plunging into her work, the distraught novelist begins relentless research into the life of Branwell Brontë, a tormented painter and alcoholic who was the only son born into the literary family. "Daphne" is the story of a famed British novelist on the verge of a breakdown, weaving in the strands of her most famous book, a literary whodunit and a troubled, modern character heavily influenced by the writer's work.
Is this "The Hours" meets Daphne du Maurier? Picardie, a highly respected author, wrote "a very different book, but there are certain elements that are not dissimilar," said Fox, who produced the 2002 film about Virginia Woolf. What's more remarkable is how he got involved in the project. Picardie spent years researching Menabilly, the famed seaside estate that inspired "Rebecca." Then she learned Fox had met the writer at the estate when he was a boy, and that his 100-year-old aunt also knew her. Through friends, she sent him an early draft of the book, and he was instantly smitten.
"I know the world this story takes place in incredibly well, I was maybe 5, 6 years old when I met Du Maurier and it's indelibly imprinted on my mind," Fox said. "It will be a very compelling story." For Picardie, the coincidence of selling a book option to a filmmaker who has intimate knowledge of her story is astonishing. "I couldn't have wished for a better fit, as an author." (Josh Getlin)
Any falling currency can be likened to an ugly woman, who in the words of Jane Eyre "is a blot on the fair face of creation." (Josef Omorotionmwan)Does that sound like something the PLAIN, timid governess would say? Or does it sound like something Blanche Ingram - spoiled, proud, rich and pretty - would say instead? A quick glance at chapter XVII answers the question:
Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse to-night; both her words and her air seemed intended to excite not only the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring indeed.So, dear journalists, do not boast of your literary knowledge when it's simply not there. You will make your point better if you stick to what you know. Thanks.
"Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!" exclaimed she, rattling away at the instrument. "Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a step beyond papa's park gates: nor to go even so far without mama's permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman -- her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be: -- Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man." [Our bold]
As people began to shop more, novelists imagined them doing it. Jane Eyre cringes at Mr Rochester’s pre-wedding excess, while Undine Spragg’s spending drives her husband to despair.Categories: Books, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV
I first read Wuthering Heights when I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was a favourite of my mother's, and she bought me a copy.And secondly Helen Dunmore - much loved here at BrontëBlog - is interviewed by Anna Metcalfe.
I remember finding the novel strange, mysterious, dramatic and compelling.
Most of all, it was very touching.
As I grew older, I came to understand that it was a story of revenge, and not a great love story, as so many think it is.
I became addicted to the books of the Bronte sisters - Emily, Charlotte and Anne. Often, my mother would take me to Haworth, where the sisters grew up with their brother, Branwell, at the Haworth Parsonage. Their father was the parson. This is a museum now. My mother also took me over the wild, windswept moors to Top Withens, supposedly the site of Wuthering Heights, which is of course, the name of the house where Catherine Earnshaw lived, not a place.
I grew up in Yorkshire, and Haworth is about two hours from Leeds, the city of my birth. This book, more than any other, influenced me and my writing.
I believe Emily Bronte to be one of the great geniuses of English literature. So influenced am I by the Brontes, I invented a play called Charlotte and Her Sisters, which I used in my novel The Triumph of Katie Byrne. Katie is an actress and appears in the play, but before this happens, I ''take'' her to Haworth to visit the parsonage.
What is so extraordinary about Wuthering Heights is that Emily Bronte used two narrators to tell her story. Also, Heathcliff is the great Byronic hero. Even today, I find the book unputdownable.
Barbara Taylor Bradford is author of ''Heirs of Ravenscar'' (HarperCollins).
Have you ever imitated another writer’s style?Let's continue with Brontëites and the news du jour. Today's Justine Picardie's Daphne release date and both Justine Picardie and Daphne du Maurier can be clearly classified as Brontëites of the highest order.
I’ve been influenced by a large number of writers. I copied the patterns in the poetry of Keats and T.S. Eliot in my teens. I aspire to F. Scott Fitzgerald for precision in writing, and Charlotte Bronte for her daring.
I have a major interest in all things relating to Daphne du Maurier and I love Justine Picardie's writing so I had been waiting eagerly for Justine's new novel `Daphne'. I was not disappointed, once I started reading I could not put it down. The story has an involved plot, which provides the reader with masses of detail and information, making the book a compelling read.The Sigla Blog also writes on the subject of Daphne. The blog owner hasn't read it yet but posts a reflection on it all the same, discussing the idea behind the book and Justine Picardie's recent articles in the press.
The story is told by three people Daphne du Maurier, Alex Symington and a young woman. Despite the three narratives, each of which interweaves with the other two, it is not an unnecessarily complicated novel. The way the story moves chapter by chapter through the different areas of the novel, helps you to hold on to everything that is happening. I think the story about the young woman is what held me the most, probably because, for me, she was the unknown quantity. She was so isolated from all the affection and comfort that most people take for granted...she was lost and alone and when she eventually found herself and we found out her name I was very moved. I like to think that she was called Jane after Wendy's daughter in Peter Pan. There were many other moments that really touched me - references to Guy du Maurier, Gerald du Maurier and the birds, the fact that inevitably Peter Llewelyn Davies was going to throw himself under that train, the young woman in the grounds of Menabilly. There was so much that had to be told and it was done brilliantly.
The elements of the novel that relate to Daphne du Maurier and Alex Symington have been well researched and are very strong factually and the fiction which is the young woman's story brings the whole narrative together beautifully. I lived and breathed every word and I hope other readers will appreciate the detail and complexity of this book as well as enjoying its content. I am sure this will be a book that provokes much interest and discussion and that it will give the author the recognition that she deserves.
What sort of person deserves love? Is it someone whose face resembles the ethereal quality that the symbol of affection embodies? Is it someone whose character is blameless? Is it someone accustomed to hard labor or someone used to riches and leisure? These are some of the questions posed in N.G. McClernan's theatrical adaptation of Jane Eyre. And while the talented cast try their best to paint a portrait of love, far more things than breaking through the bridled, Victorian era stand in their way. [...]Here is a complex image from an article on fashion in the French newspaper Le Figaro:
The 23 characters from the novel are reduced to 16, with four actors taking on various, memorable roles. Bruce Barton, resembling Kelsey Grammar in appearance, recycles his bombastic speaking voice for all the roles, but still manages to entertain. Alice Connorton and Annalisa Loeffler are both chameleons, deserving mention for their versatility. Unlike the novel, the production spends a great deal of time on Jane's experience with St. John Rivers, her cousin and potential mate. As Rivers, Nat Cassidy is much harsher and religious law-abiding that his character is in the novel, but it also helps us to understand why Jane runs back to Rochester. She not only still loves Rochester, but committing to Rivers is clearly a fate that she doesn't want for herself. The audience doesn't want that for her either. As Jane, Murphy is appropriately meek and blunt at the right times. Although her interactions with Bodine can't be wholly described as fiery, when they do get comfortable with each other and their declarations of love, they do come alive together. Bodine, sometimes rigid and humorless for Rochester's restraints, is debonair when he needs to be.
Jane Eyre is an ambitious effort to stage a highly respected, 400 page novel. The fact that they were able to encapsulate the gist of the novel in a two-hour presentation is a feat unto itself. However, some of the technical elements need to be smoother, and some of the staging choices need to be revisited before it can be called a success. And while it does shine in some parts, it won't be winning any new fans of Victorian fiction with the dry and tiresome beginning. Still, there are explorations of views on important themes such as social class, gender relations, morality and religion that are still pertinent today. While you may not be able to identify with corsets and Victorian restraint, the themes discussed in the novel and in this production should be familiar to you as components of the upcoming presidential election. (Cindy Pierre)
À ces néo-George Sand, on préfère les passages plus « loose » où le grand manteau d’officier ceinturé évoque joliment l’allure racée d’une Lauren Bacall qui se serait égarée dans un roman des sœurs Brontë. (Caroline Rousseau)It basically says that the item is reminiscent of Lauren Bacall lost in a novel by the Brontë sisters. Complex, as we said.
In the late-1950s, Daphne du Maurier began work on a biographical study of Branwell Brontë in the hope of establishing herself as a writer that the critical establishment would take seriously. She dedicated her book to the scholar JA Symington, from whom she had bought various manuscripts, some of which had been fraudulently attributed to her subject’s more famous sisters by the crook and forger TJ Wise. Symington had been the curator and librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the Brotherton Collection, but was dismissed from both posts after various items went missing.As we said a couple of days ago, we are currently immersed in Daphne, which means we don't have absolute power (yet!) to disqualify this review, but we'd like to caution our readers against it all the same. The points the reviewer picks on are obviously out of context and most of them can easily be smoothed away by reading the book. For instance, when Daphne and Peter Llewellyn Davies refer to 'Uncle Jim' as 'Jim Barrie' they are referring to the author in his literary context, just as Daphne du Maurier refers to her father alternatively as Gerald - when she is not strictly speaking of him as just her father - or Daddy.
In Justine Picardie’s novel, a strenuously contrived secondary narrative, concerning a young woman carrying out research into the Brontës for a PhD, has been bolted on to the far more interesting story of du Maurier and Symington. As we are frequently reminded, this unnamed woman’s personal circumstances echo those of the nameless heroine of du Maurier’s most famous novel, Rebecca. Like the author’s, her marriage is in difficulties and she shares her sexual ambivalence, but she remains a cipher. Forgery, theft, adultery, lesbianism, incest and suicide ought to provide plenty of scope for fiction, but this misconceived book never really comes to life.
Although Picardie is capable of the occasional deft touch (“There’s nothing like being lectured on Henry James by one’s husband to put you off both of them”), much of the book appears to have been written on autopilot, its situations and prose equally hackneyed. It is the sort of novel in which people talk aloud to portraits and photos and have “illuminating” dreams. Mistresses are expected to sport “blood-red talons”, and copies of the TLS containing unwelcome headlines about rival biographies are thrown down with force. In order to clear their minds, people stride off into the countryside – though if du Maurier is “hoping to be soothed by the wild anemones in the woods” in November, she is in for a long wait.
Far too many sentences and paragraphs end with a row of dots. These don’t indicate interruptions or omissions, but are a crude typographical shorthand intended to add “significance” or “tension”. Those parts of the book devoted to du Maurier and Symington, meanwhile, suffer the usual faults of fiction about real people, notably characters telling each other things they already know because the reader may not. Thus, in a letter to du Maurier, Symington has to identify Arthur Bell Nicholls as Charlotte Brontë’s widower, something of which his correspondent, “a keen member of the Brontë Society”, is unlikely to have been unaware.
The need to keep readers informed also provides several catastrophically false notes, as when du Maurier’s cousin Peter Llewelyn Davies talks to her about “Jim Barrie”. As this inattentively edited novel later states, JM Barrie “had always been Uncle Jim to [du Maurier] and her sisters, just as he was to her cousins”, and they certainly wouldn’t have referred to “Jim Barrie” in conversation with each other. Famous published remarks about Peter Pan are regurgitated as dialogue, and anyone who knows Llewelyn Davies’s eventual fate will groan inwardly when a depressed du Maurier stands on the platform of Sloane Square Underground station “thinking how easy it would be to jump in front of the next train”.
Picardie has clearly undertaken considerable research into her potentially fascinating biographical story, raising all manner of worthwhile questions about the integrity of writers, collectors and manuscripts. It is therefore all the more regrettable that instead of writing a factual account she has produced this baggy, repetitive and inert slab of pseudo-fiction.
Justine Picardie's new novel, Daphne, is a rum concoction which comes wrapped in one of the most attractive jacket designs, based on an illustration by Alison Lang, that I've seen in a long time. As the book opens, we encounter the writer Daphne du Maurier, 50 years old and at a particularly low point in her life. Her husband, Tommy "Moper" Browning, is recovering from a breakdown, brought on by drink and his affair with the woman Daphne calls "The Snow Queen". At Menabilly, her Cornish home, Daphne is consumed by regret, and haunted by the ghostly presence of her most famous fictional creation, Rebecca.More of our insights into the book will appear here shortly, but please don't believe everything you read - just read for yourself.
To combat her feelings of desolation, Daphne immerses herself in the book she is trying to write, a biography of Branwell Brontë. She enlists the scholarly help of J A Symington, an editor of the Brontës' writings and a collector of their manuscripts. But is Symington as trustworthy and respectable as his reputation suggests? And can Daphne rescue Branwell from the century of belittlement he has suffered at the hands of his sisters' admirers, and bring evidence of his true genius to the fore?
Picardie's novel is buttressed by an impressive amount of research, so much so that one sometimes wishes that she'd concentrated on a non-fictional treatment of her major themes. As background, she has been guided by Margaret Forster's 1993 biography of Daphne du Maurier, and by the host of other critical and biographical writing about du Maurier which has accompanied the swift revival of interest in her life and work since her death in 1989. She's also investigated the tangled web surrounding the dispersal of Brontë manuscripts, and the sale of some of Branwell's writings with forged signatures in Charlotte's or Emily's name to ensure a better price. Symington's involvement is murky here. In the 1920s, he was instrumental in shaping the Brontë collections at both the University of Leeds and at the new Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth. But in 1930, Symington left the Brontë Society under a cloud, after it was discovered that various prized items were missing from the museum.
Picardie creates a convincing portrait of Symington in the most assured sections of the novel. Like the other major Brontë collectors with whom he was involved, T J Wise and Clement Shorter, Symington was a self-made man, conscious of his humble beginnings, and prepared to stray into nefarious practices if a precious manuscript was in his reach. His relationship with du Maurier, she burdened by feelings of inadequacy but wanting to write something "serious", he in awe of her fame, but increasingly unable to separate the truth from the imaginary as he looks back over his past, is very nicely done.
Much less successful is a sub-plot, set in the present, in which a latter-day PhD student becomes absorbed in Daphne's 50-year-old quest for Branwell, partly as a defence against her husband's continuing obsession with his first wife, Rebecca. Here the plotline of secret meetings and stolen letters barely limps along, while the clunky parallels with du Maurier's Rebecca are wholly devoid of the light, transforming touch that they need.
Unfortunately, the novel can't help but end on an anti-climactic note. Despite all the effort that du Maurier put into her research, her resulting biography about Branwell Brontë hardly helped to restore his reputation, concluding that Branwell had exhausted all his literary talent by the time he reached 21. Picardie has Daphne fearing that she may have succeeded in killing off Branwell, smothering him within the pages of her book.
Slowly, but constantly, new reviews of Justine Picardie's Daphne (published today, August 5, in the US by Bloomsbury US). This one is by Martin Rubin in Los Angeles Times:JUSTINE PICARDIE'S "Daphne," which focuses on Daphne du Maurier's life in crisis as she turns 50 and prepares to celebrate her silver wedding anniversary, is an engrossing and absorbing read. And as if her ability to bring to life so convincingly the eponymous heroine were not enough, Picardie's novel touches on several other worlds guaranteed to draw crowds. For who can resist the Brontes (Du Maurier is writing a biography of Charlotte, Anne and Emily's brother Branwell)? Or the Du Maurier legacy (her father, Gerald, was the leading matinee idol of his day; her grandfather, George, was the creator of Svengali in his classic novel "Trilby")? Or Du Maurier's connections to J.M. Barrie's "lost boys" who inspired "Peter Pan" (her first cousins) and the British royal family (her husband is Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Browning, treasurer to Prince Philip)? All this -- and much more -- adds up to a delicious and piquant stew of interlocking worlds and desperate people, told with considerable panache and much psychological insight.The Dark Knight film is a curious phenomenon in the Brontë referential newsworld. The presence of the late Heath Ledger as Joker and the inmediate association of his name with Emily Brontë's best known creation generates articles like this one in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
The novel operates on three levels. Du Maurier struggles in 1957 with her husband's nervous breakdown and subsequent retirement from Buckingham Palace after his disastrous affair with a woman she dubs "The Snow Queen." J. Alexander Symington, a seedy, defrocked Brontë curator of dubious reputation and flawed conduct, corresponds with Du Maurier, tempting her with tidbits about Branwell that turn out to be of little value despite the money he manages to extract from her. A half-century later, a young academic obsessed with -- and planning to write about -- Du Maurier studies the novelist as she struggles with her own demons in the form of a distant husband, his forbidding house and his impressive ex-wife.
This situation, of course, replicates -- but without "Rebecca's" sturm und drang -- the situation of Du Maurier's most celebrated novel; and this young woman, like its narrator, lacks a first name as she tells her tale in the first person. Artful as Picardie's homage is, these sections of the book are the novel's weakest. Perhaps she thought that readers needed them as a guide to Daphne's turmoil and Symington's desperate decline, but those parts are so electric in their capacity to attract that the plodding, pallid 21st century players seem superfluous. But no matter: with such a pathetic con man and a multifaceted character like Daphne, both superbly evoked, our cup runneth over.
The title is indeed apt, for Daphne is the heart and soul of the novel. Clearly Picardie has lived, breathed, eaten and drunk her heroine, absorbed her, analyzed her, understood her. More remarkable, she has then managed to do all these things as Daphne du Maurier in the pages of her book, investing her portrait with an authenticity that is breathtaking. To be able to capture as contradictory a character as Du Maurier -- her personality, her complicated sexuality, her artistry as a writer -- is impressive enough. But even though Picardie writes about her in the third person, she seems able to channel what she was actually like: all that passion bubbling away under the stiff upper lip of Lady Browning.
In a scene set in London's Cafe Royal, Daphne is explaining to her cousin Peter Llewellyn Davies her obsessive foray into Bronteland. He replies: "It sounds to me like you've got under Branwell's skin. Or has he got under yours?" Exactly what we see happening between Picardie and Du Maurier in these pages.
One of the benefits of the feminist revision of literary history and criticism has been to rescue talents like Du Maurier from the ghetto of those days' equivalent of chick lit, where a patronizing and obtuse male-dominated establishment had consigned them. At her best, Du Maurier produced innovative fiction packed with dramatic situations and psychological insight. (It is no accident that her fiction was the basis for two of Hitchcock's iconic films, "Rebecca" and "The Birds.") With a charismatic father she adored and whose quasi-incestuous love for her influenced her profoundly, Daphne was even more complicated as a person. Largely heterosexual, on occasion what she termed "the boy in the box" popped out, leading to serious passions for the wife of her American publisher Ellen Doubleday and the star actress Gertrude Lawrence, who had been her father's mistress. Her ability to juggle celebrity as an author, tumultuous extramarital affairs with both men and women and life as a country gentlewoman and courtier's wife hobnobbing with royalty took its toll on her inwardly, making her biography as fascinating as her fiction.
Picardie's "Daphne" will make many readers want to read Du Maurier's work, both fiction and non, most of it now reissued by Virago Press, which has also published the fascinating "The Daphne du Maurier Companion" (edited by Helen Taylor), full of information about her life and work in essays by many hands including Picardie's. Not surprisingly, she contributes an essay on "The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte," and she also writes one about "The King's General," a historical novel set in 17th century Cornwall. One way or another, Picardie is making a major contribution to the continuing upward reevaluation of Daphne du Maurier's standing in the literary world.
Then we started to talk about a book rarely discussed on Ocean Avenue: Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It’s still the Bad Boy/Good Boy motherlode.Do you feel like eating? The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat recommends
Heathcliff is to the Joker as Linton is to Batman. (Or to the blonde guy — whichever.)
If Heathcliff represents the raw, a la Levi-Strauss, then Linton represents the cooked. Heathcliff is destined by his very soul to be the Bad Boy; Linton, equally bound by his destiny, is the Good.
In one telling scene, Bronte shows us a very young Cathy dividing her food and attention between a fierce guard dog that has attacked her but is now gently won over to her side, and a small indoor-pet dog that is equally affectionate. It is clear that the dogs represent the two men. (Insert “duh” here.) This becomes especially clear when Cathy pinches the nose of the guard dog to hurt it slightly, but she keeps it by her. So will Cathy and Heathcliff torment each other but be unable to separate. Cathy can articulate quite clearly her attraction to Linton as well as to Heathcliff; some critics seem remarkably surprised by the very idea that she can desire two men simultaneously. She wants one man who can be both lover and husband at the same time.
She doesn’t want two men; she wants one man who can meet all her needs. “‘I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free … and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!‘” Cathy longs for the prelapsarian moment, the time before her fall into the world of romance, in order to escape from the decision of having to choose between the two men.
Back to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and then I’ll stop: What’s fascinating is that the character of the Joker is even more complicated than the typical Heathcliff/Linton or Bad Boy/Good Boy split because he’s sort of the Bad Boy and the Bad Girl combined. We’re attracted to our own potential badness and the whole gender-confusion edge to the entire set-up. (Gina Barreca)
With more Victoriana than a Bronte novel, Madrona Manor (1001 Westside Rd. Healdsburg, 800.258.4003) is a lace and tassel wonderland for lovers.The New Zealand Herald talks about 'pruning your literary wardrobe':
In the same way Carrie Bradshaw would never leave behind her favourite Choos and Blahniks, I could no more abandon Jane Eyre, Jane Austen and my out-of-print Helene Hanffs to make way for newer acquisitions. I did toss out all those doorstopper-size aeroplane reads as quickly as last year's zebra prints. As I did The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler; I mean, yes it's clever, but why bother with a knock-off when the originals are just so good? (...) Clearly - and fortunately - fiction and fashion are not quite the same. (Charlotte Evans)Let's congratulate soprano Phyllis Curtin (picture source), creator of the role of Cathy in Carlisle Floyd's
Wuthering Heights 1958 opera, who is one of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame 2008 Inductees: The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame announced its second class of inductees at a press conference Tuesday in the Great Hall of the Cultural Center in the Capitol Complex.Old Fogey posts about Charlotte Brontë and Madame de Staël's shared - erm - 'lack of understanding' of Jane Austen. Liquid Dreams Of... talks about Emma Tennant's Heathcliff's Tale and Rosalind Whitman's Black & White in Wuthering Heights etchings. My Space has read and liked Jane Eyre.
The musicians to be inducted in the living category are Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Phyllis Curtin, Robert Drasnin, The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover, and Charlie McCoy. (The Virginia State Journal)
The last month has been consumed by an endless, spooling monologue in my head about the publication of my most recent book, a novel called "Daphne". I don't want to keep thinking about it -- or the sales, or the reviews -- because I think it's important to let go of a book, once it's published. Well, that's the theory, anyway, but for some reason, I've found it hard to put this into practise. I spent such a long time researching this book -- which is based on a real episode in the life of Daphne du Maurier -- and there's something about the subject matter (madness, failure, hauntings, ghosts, both literary and otherwise) that has really got under my skin. At its best, while I was writing and researching "Daphne", I felt that prickling at the back of my neck, which is always a signal (to me, at least), that the book has somehow taken on a life of its own. At its worst, I've felt more depressed and anxious about this book than any other I've written, and more possessed by it, as well.We have read it, of course, and we heartily recommend it. The Spectator's reviewer agrees with us:
The odd thing about publication is that you get a sudden spate of public responses -- from the critics -- and readers have talked to me after I've done a couple of events. But I'd like the chance to have quieter conversations, via this blog. If anyone reads it, that is...
In 1958, Daphne du Maurier published a collection of short stories, The Breaking Point. Justine Picardie’s novel Daphne begins the year of the stories’ composition, 1957. Du Maurier, then Britain’s best-selling novelist, struggles with her own breaking point. Newly acquainted with the infidelity of her husband, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, known as Tommy, she oscillates between anger and despair. Tommy succumbs to a nervous breakdown. Daphne’s mood is not lightened by her current literary preoccupation, a biography of Branwell Brontë. In Picardie’s hands, Daphne dreams of rescuing Branwell from critical obscurity by proving him the author, at least in part, of his sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights. Ultimately she acknowledges that hope as fanciful; she fails Branwell as she has failed her fading husband. She writes her way out of anguish but does not deceive herself that she has achieved more than a temporary papering over of the cracks. ‘She felt that if she started weeping, then she would not stop, the tears would turn into a sea, and she would drown in them.’Categories: Books, Websites
Daphne is a compulsively readable novel. It merges fact and fiction, the present and the past, in a near-flawless construct that weaves together Brontë and du Maurier fiction and family history — colliding in Daphne’s writing of her biography of Branwell Brontë. It frames the whole within a modern-day story of a D Phil student fascinated by the background to du Maurier’s Branwell book. It is a clever and satisfying literary adventure that serves its real-life heroine well. Although Daphne draws on the enduring popularity not only of du Maurier’s fiction but the writer herself, it stokes the fire that feeds it and will certainly rekindle readers’ appetites for both.
If there is a downside to this elegant and absorbing novel it is that it is too clever and too self-conscious. Neither author nor reader is allowed to forget the artful literary game being played out in Daphne. The novel is a series of echoes and parallels, each carefully delineated. ‘Real’ and fictional characters overlap and merge:
Slowly, slowly, the pattern turned in on itself, like a kaleidoscope, until Daphne was Rebecca, and her husband was ready to kill her and replace her with a younger woman.
The story of the D Phil student, nameless until the novel’s close, replays Rebecca, which, we are reminded, is in itself a reworking of Jane Eyre. Du Maurier’s collaborator in her biography of Branwell, disgraced Brontë scholar J. A. Symington, shares with Branwell numerous characteristics.
The result is a book that is self-referential and inward-looking — it offers few insights. The fictional Daphne wonders whether writing is all meaningless, and the modern-day narrator recognises what we have known all along, that she is not defined by du Maurier’s fictions. Happily, in reaching these workaday conclusions, Daphne takes the reader on a 400-page journey that is one of undiluted pleasure. (Matthew Dennison)
Racial Strategies in Jane Eyre
Patricia McKee, Dartmouth College
Victorian Literature and Culture (2009), 37:67-83
Abstract
In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), multiple discursive strategies contend with the difficulty of determining racial identity. My aim here is not to delineate a straightforward or unambiguous racial discourse in the novel but rather to clarify the usefulness of ambiguity to the narrative's racialism. If, as Ann Laura Stoler has argued, racism in the nineteenth century depended on flexible rather than fixed criteria, Brontë's novel allows for the study of such criteria and of the discursive displacements that assign them to diverse human qualities.
Review of Justine Picardie's Daphne
Ginette Carpenter
Women: A Cultural Review, Volume 20, Issue 1 April 2009 , pages 89 - 96
Abstract
This review essay presents a review of Justine Picardie's novel Daphne, setting it within a critical context. It opens by claiming that Daphne articulates several contemporary literary debates: it specifically addresses the location of the woman writer and reader and the relationship between author and text. The essay illustrates how Picardies's tripartite narrative works both to revise Rebecca and to re-position du Maurier as an author worthy of academic attention. The novel's extensive use of intertextuality and its own hybridisation of fiction and biography are seen to operate as an analogy for the complexities and pleasures of reading, writing and research. This essay is sympathetic to the recuperation of the popular woman writer and popular women's writing but argues that Daphne's transgressive potential resides in its repeated slippage between the textual and the material, as highlighted by its imbrication of biographical fact and fictional narrative. It concludes by suggesting that these transgressive elements also work to foreground the ethical contradictions of reading and writing.
Die Figur des Heathcliff als Spiegel der Natur in Emily Brontёs 'Wuthering Heights'Categories: Journals, Scholar
Scholary Paper (Seminar), 2008, 26 Pages
Author: Julia Kulewatz
Wuthering Heights ist durchsetzt von entsetzlichen, bewegenden und phantastischen Ereignissen. Für eine solche Inszenierung der Charaktere und Geschehnisse spielte das Naturverständnis der Autorin eine prioritäre Rolle. Das sich ständig wandelnde Wetter, die Jahreszeiten, die trüben Moor- und Heidelandschaften und vor allem die Stürme, die das Anwesen Wuthering Heights stets umgeben, haben einen starken Effekt auf die Anlage und Entwicklung des jeweiligen Charakters, welcher entweder im Konflikt mit der übernatürlich angelegten Natur steht, oder mit ihr agiert. Die beiden Protagonisten Heathcliff und Catherine Earnshaw sind sogar so sehr mit der Natur um Wuthering Heights verbunden, dass sie ohne sie nicht sein könnten, da sie sich über diese definieren. Ihre Beziehung zueinander ist zu vergleichen mit einer ganz eigenen Naturgewalt, mit der der aufbrausenden Stürmen, oder der tiefen, dunklen Moorlandschaften, sowie der von Catherine und Heathcliff über alles geliebten Heide. Auf diesen übernatürlichen Zusammenhang, von einer ganz eigenen, unzivilisierten Natur, im Bezug auf die Charakteranlage und die Bedeutung der Protagonisten im Verhältnis zueinander, werden sich die Ausführungen dieser Arbeit konzentrieren. (Google translation)
Well, the remark is a bit misleading, as the school report was made when she was 8 years old. For the sake of completeness Charlotte Brontë's complete entry at the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School reads:Almost six in 10 schoolchildren believe they have to work harder now for A-levels and GCSEs than their parents did, a survey suggests.A similar number believe that news coverage of their results will be critical, regardless of how well they perform. (...)
And he added that history had shown that school performance is not necessarily the best indicator of future success.
"Churchill was a poor performer at school," Dr [David] Wright [,CIEA chief executive,] said.
"Einstein struggled with his school diploma, and Charlotte Bronte's school report in 1825 said that 'she knew nothing about grammar' and wrote 'indifferently'. So what's new?"
Charlotte Brontë 8 1824 August 10th Vaccinated H.The Washington Post publishes a positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne:
Cough Reads tolerably - Writes indifferently -
Ciphers a little bit and works neatly. Knows nothing
of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments. Left Schools
1825 June 1st Governess Altoghether clever of
her age but knows nothing systematically.
The Daphne of this novel's title is a novelist herself, Daphne du Maurier, the bestselling author of Rebecca (1938). Among her other books is a speculative biography, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), for which she's less well known. Yet du Maurier was haunted by the figure of the Brontë brother, that hard-to-decipher and troubled boy who chronicled the world of Angria, an imaginary kingdom he and his sisters could shape. In minuscule script, he dreamed of adventure and conquest, calling himself the Earl of Northangerland; he may have furnished a template for Emily's Heathcliff or Charlotte's Mr. Rochester. When Branwell died at 31, in 1848, he left behind both thwarted ambition and -- with reference to who wrote what -- some mysteries unsolved. Was he an important talent or an artist subject to delusion; which manuscripts are genuine, which forged and when, for what reason, by whom?The London Free Press announces that the Theatre Nemesis's production of Wuthering Heights presented at the London Ontario Fringe Festival:
Justine Picardie's Daphne is a complicated tale-within-a-tale about literary detective work, the tangled web we weave when trying to make sense of earlier deception. The novel begins in 1957. Du Maurier is famous, 50 years old, unhappily married to an ex-soldier and anxious to prove her intellectual credentials to those who scorn her as merely successful. Compelled by the world of the Brontës, she makes contact with a reclusive editor of their work, buying (on her part, innocently) purloined memorabilia and seeking his advice. In real life, du Maurier did dedicate The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë to John Alexander Symington, a "now-forgotten Brontë scholar" to whom she wrote letters and from whom she received epistolary suggestions; their actual letters are reproduced here. In this fictional treatment of their encounter, the portrait of Symington is deftly drawn, and Picardie evokes the world of scholarship and how it can edge up to self-destructive obsession.
(...)In this novel's accomplished retelling, Picardie moves with ease from Daphne's memories of Barrie ("Uncle Jim) and Gertrude ("Gertie") Lawrence to her attempt to unravel the question of authorship of the Brontë siblings' poems and even, perhaps, the great prose.
Most of this sleuthing is performed by a contemporary narrator, a young woman living in London (near the du Maurier home and burial ground), as haunted by du Maurier as du Maurier was by Brontë. Orphaned, old-fashioned and working ineffectually on a Ph.D., she travels to Yorkshire and visits the Brontë manse, Haworth, then gets lost in the woods of Menabilly, du Maurier's retreat in Cornwall. Near action's end, she explains her compulsion: "I feel alive when I think of Daphne du Maurier; I feel that her life contains all kinds of clues and messages that might help me make sense of mine."
Less successful as a character is the narrator's husband Paul, a "Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester and Maxim de Winter" out of central casting. He may look the part of a romantic hero, but he's a middle-aged scholar of Henry James who still yearns for his first wife, Rachel. As the narrator observes, "I must say, there's nothing like being lectured on Henry James by one's husband to put you off both of them." Rachel, a seductive poet also fascinated by du Maurier and the Brontës, gets equally embroiled in the hunt for lost texts; there's a kind of Keystone Kop scramble for who will find which notebook first. Unfortunately, Picardie's mirroring stories grow not so much illuminating as repetitive, and we care less than do her characters about who first wrote what.
The narrator spells out the problem: "What right do I have to try to make connections between [du Maurier's] books and her life? It's dangerous territory -- like all those dated, sentimental Brontë biographies, spinning the myth about saintly Charlotte and spiritual Emily and bad Branwell and gentle Anne. Those kinds of books make me feel uncomfortable; it's the literary equivalent of catching butterflies, and then killing them, in order to pin them down and display them in a box."
But the reader need not be a devotée of Branwell Brontë or Daphne du Maurier or even the Gothic genre to take pleasure in this novel; the butterflies are brightly colored and the display well-lit. (Nicholas Delbanco)
A video of the production can also be seen.Four shows have won coveted spots on the Impresario Performance list at this year's Fringe fest.It means extra attention, and an added performance for each of the winners.
Open-call auditions for the first season at Farmers Alley Theatre will begin at 7 p.m. Aug. 17 and 18 in the Community Room of the City Center Building, 125 S. Kalamazoo Mall. Bring a current photo and a resume. Prepare your choice of a short song (no Jason Robert Brown), short monologue or both. An accompanist will be provided. (...)Ok, now you know...but, why is Jason Robert Brown off limits?
April 3-18: ``Jane Eyre,'' music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and book by John Caird.
The plot is closer to Jane Eyre than Drac-ula, with a heavy dose of Romeo and Juliet. And the series is carried along by an elastic sexual tension that one critic has characterised as “the erotics of abstinence”. (Tony-Allen Mills)The Charleston Post and Courier reviews an old BrontëBlog acquaintance: Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street:
If Livesey's novel is dense with parallels, it never feels as if the connections are forced. Each of the important characters is scathed by childhood trauma, and each builds a life over the scar. Each narrative also has its own literary mascot. Sean is drawn to Keats, Abigail to Dickens, Dara to Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Cameron to Lewis Carroll. (Catherine Holmes)A Brontë reference introduced in a recreation of another well-known novel is a new kind of metafiction intertextuality. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviews What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn. The K is for Karenina, of course:
As in Tolstoy's novel, Reyn tells two stories, one of Anna Roitman, who's about to marry Alex K., and the other, Lev Gavrilov, who has for years been quietly in love with Anna's cousin, Katia. (...)El País Semanal publishes a survey to 100 Spanish-speaking writers choosing the ten books which somehow changed their lives. There are a couple of Brontës: Jane Eyre is chosen by Nuria Amat and Wuthering Heights by Ana María Matute.
A veteran of 14 readings of "Wuthering Heights", Anna is a Romantic with a capital R. She longs more for intensity than for singing birds. When she encounters the hoped-for fiance of Katia, a young writer with his own literary illusions, Anna thinks she has met a soulmate. Even without reading Tolstoy's novel, we know where a romantic's heart wants to go, and Anna goes there. (Sherri Hallgren)
Eric Markle, 37, has trouble sleeping. He sits at a long table poring over a grand jury report on the biggest story in the city - the starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. He is appalled and quotes a line from Jane Eyre: "Such dread as children only can feel." (Jennifer Lin in The Philadelphia Inquirer)On the blogosphere - several readers of Wuthering Heights: staticmatrix, Only a Novel:
Whoa! Emily Brontë, where did that come from?! As I was perusing this novel, I was just as intrigued by the person who wrote the story as by the novel itself. Who was this Emily Brontë who dared imagine and put into words this bold, brash, intense, in-your-face story? How courageous; how risky; how different; how honest. I like her.Pixiechick_sw has read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
Wow! That was one intense book! Anne is very ahead of her time. I can see why this book did terribly in the 1840s. It deals with the injustices of a woman's place in society, sex, infidelity, spousal abuse, alcoholism, and other addictions. This book was heavy, painful, redeeming and no matter in what century a person lives--EXACTLY RIGHT!Categories: Books, Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, Music, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
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