A book that offers pleasures of recognition and revelation for devoted fans of Jane Eyre.
Holmes’ (Alaska’s Wild West, 2014, etc.) historical novel re-examines Edward Rochester’s conflicted pursuit of Jane Eyre from Rochester’s perspective.
This retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 novel opens on Rochester’s first encounter with “Miss Eyre,” his ward’s governess—whom he notes “doesn’t look above a child herself, a fairy creature”—on the road to his ancestral home, Thornfield Hall. Although he’s soon captivated by Jane’s unflappable manner, unusual beauty, and paintings—“fierce, raw, full of nature’s violence and something more, something otherworldly”—he’s constrained by his marriage to the insane Bertha Mason, who’s hidden on Thornfield’s third floor. Although he deeply resents being tricked into marrying Bertha as a young man, he sees her confinement as a merciful alternative to an asylum where “the shackles never come off.” Overall, because this book’s plot and sensibility are so closely interlocked with Jane Eyre’s, it may be less rewarding for readers unfamiliar with the source material. For example, in addition to Rochester’s past, Holmes fills in new details about his estate management, showing his generous aspect as well as the practical details of Georgian country life, including the threat of his workforce immigrating to America. The novel’s frankness about Rochester and Jane’s sexual attraction isn’t uniformly graceful; for example, there’s something jarring about Jane communicating her breathless realization to Rochester that they will be joined “by [their] nether parts.” However, the author does enhance the sense of Thornfield as a grounded, vivid place. The first-person narration captures Rochester’s wry cynicism, juxtaposing it with his more vulnerable thoughts. As he and Jane become closer, he has increasing difficulty concealing the evidence of his wife’s violent rages. Bertha’s heritage “of idiots and maniacs” is compounded here by the revelation of multiple generations of incestuous family history. This further entangles Bertha’s madness with Gothic obsessions with sex, bloodlines, and purity; here, she’s rendered so monstrous that, for all his suffering, Rochester gets off the hook a little too easily for his attempted bigamy.
A book that offers pleasures of recognition and revelation for devoted fans of Jane Eyre.Pub Date: March 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9972741-0-3
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Legend Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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