Eerily Atmospheric Brontë

Yesterday we posted an interview with Shannon McKenna Schmidt, one of the co-authors of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Today it's the other co-author, Joni Rendon, who chooses for USA Today her top ten of favourite literary hikes including Brontë country, of course:

The Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens
Haworth, England

"The windswept Yorkshire Moors immortalized by the Brontës are one of the most eerily atmospheric places to hike in England," Rendon says. "A 2½-mile walk from the sisters' former home, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, through heather-strewn hills leads to their favorite destination, a gentle waterfall and stream. Rest on the stone slab known as the Brontë chair before walking a mile farther to see the ruins of an isolated farmhouse, Top Withens, the possible setting of Wuthering Heights." (Kathy Baruffi)

Hollywood Today reviews Laura Joh Rowland's The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë:

“What particularly stuck in my mind was the thought that no matter how much adventure she’d experienced, she always craved more,” says author Laura Joh Rowland. “Brontë was the ultimate yearning, romantic, creative spirit. I decided that Charlotte would make the perfect heroine for a historical suspense novel.”
British novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) is best known for Jane Eyre. There are other novels employing famous authors who solve mysteries. One that comes to mind is the Jane Austen Mysteries by Stephanie Barron. The big difference is that ‘Secret Adventures’ has Charlotte Brontë telling the whole story, but she uses letters and journals written by her brother Branwell and Emily to add to her story.
“As I wrote the book, I combined the rich material of her life with the political and sexual intrigue beneath the prim morality of Victorian England,” says Rowland. “I tried to give Charlotte the adventure she craved. The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë is my heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest authors of all time.”
Rowland took more than seven years to research and write the book. “I was enthralled by her experience at a grim Victorian boarding school, her extraordinary siblings, her dramatic rise to literary fame, her late in life marriage, and her early, tragic death,” says Rowland. “I love Charlotte ’s letters. She was amazingly frank. She’s always carrying on about something, or telling someone off. She was a very vocal correspondent.”
In ‘Secret Adventures’, Brontë receives a letter from her publisher, George Smith, accusing her of breach of contract. While in London to confront her publisher, Brontë witnesses the ghastly death of a poor lonely girl. Brontë vows that she will solve the mystery of why the girl was killed.
If Rowland had kept the plot simple, it would have been more engaging. Brontë is a famous world figure, so straying too much from what’s known about her tends to strain. For example, that Brontë would have as her protector and possible love interest a British spy seems fantastic. A Victorian Charlotte Brontë dallying in Brussels and in her travels around the United Kingdom unchaperoned with a man goes beyond belief. Still, it’s a fun story. (Gabrielle Pantera)

A brief comment of the novel is also available on Read & Reel.

Although we also said that Rowland's Charlotte goes beyond belief on occasions, we wonder if the reviewer knows that the actual Victorian Charlotte Brontë did indeed dally in Brussels all by her herself.

Another usual guest on recent BrontëBlog newsrounds is Margot Livesey's latest novel The House on Fortune Street. The Christian Science Monitor reviews it and it's not an exception:

Bookworms love to imagine having real life mirror the plot of their favorite novel. What could be more romantic than, say, reliving the first encounter between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester outside Thornfield Hall? Plenty, as Margot Livesey shows in her engrossing new novel, The House on Fortune Street. (...)
Livesey (“Banishing Verona”) then rewinds the action to Dara’s childhood, as related by Dara’s dad. Dara herself covers her relationship with Edward, à la Brontë; and Abigail tells the story of their friendship at St. Andrews college in Scotland. (...)
Everyone had a book, or a writer, that was the key to their life,” Abigail’s beloved grandfather believed, and Livesey changes up her novel by having an English author preside over each section: John Keats, Charles Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll), Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. This is more than a gimmick – Livesey uses each writer to provide extra resonance to her tale. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to have a copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature handy to enjoy “The House on Fortune Street.”) (Yvonne Zipp)

Metro.co.uk reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily:

Its narrator, Emily, is a Glasgow teenager whose struggles to make sense of the litany of woe marking her adolescence are aided by her fascination with the Brontës – in particular, her namesake.
She is plucky yet vulnerable and deserves a book with a little more grit and a little less whimsy than this sweet but essentially unsatisfying tale. (Tina Jackson)

Do you remember these exchange of letters between two young women living in Israel and Gaza? Now BBC News publishes their third letters and Anav, the Israeli, replies to the Heathcliff metaphore used by her correspondent:

I read your second letter with interest, noting that your comparison of Heathcliff with Israel is inaccurate and does not reflect the complete reality of the conflict.

The Brussels Brontë Blog reviews Sarah Fermi's Emily's Journal:

I have loved reading this book. Even though the author, based on her research, had to imagine how things might have been in Emily’s life (since so few real facts are known to us, Emily being a very private person), you can really believe this story and believe that these things actually happened. The author has really succeeded in convincing me of her theory. It made me look at Emily from quite a different perspective. It is a wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable book, one that each Emily Brontë fan should have read! (Marina Saegerman)

Doing it the hard way is always easier talks about Wuthering Heights. La fabuleuse bibliothèque de Madame Charlotte reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in French.

Categories: Books, Haworth, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights