Thursday, August 20, 2009

Being Charlotte B

Charlotte's Bronte's books were formative ones for me as a reader. I remember reading Jane Eyre and Villette as an 18 year old ( a bookish provincial one no less), about to leave my country town for university. I think what touched me about these books was the transformative power of the writer's life so I was interesting to read Jude Morgan's book about Charlotte and her family. It was an odd experience reading the book, seeing Charlotte, Emily and Anne suffering the vagaries of earning a living and intensely felt crushes , to know the plot and wait for it to reveal itself. When are the going to write the books? This question kept me reading. Its a very modern book. Although Charlotte emerges as the novel's main character - simply by longevity, her siblings fall one-by-one to consumption - the novel is very equally weighted; Jude Morgan moves easily between the characters and their consciousness. the novel ends with Charlotte's voyage to the sea "the real sea The Atlantic" and some comfort in her marriage.

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