Even fans of the Brontës’ wonderful novels won’t find much to cheer for in Powell’s depressing account.
A fictional dive into the tragic yet productive lives of the three Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.
The title comes from a line in one of Emily’s poems, and British author Powell attempts throughout to capture Emily’s gothic lyricism along with her viewpoint of the Brontës’ relationships with each other and the Victorian world they inhabited. Emily begins her narration in 1842 when she arrives to join her older sisters—Maria, 10; Elizabeth, 9; Charlotte; 8—at Cowan Bridge, the model for the dismal boarding school where Jane Eyre spends her early years. Before long, Maria and Elizabeth have died from contagions they catch at the school. Death dominates this book. No one lives long, and the deaths are frequently gruesome. The surviving sisters come home to their father’s parsonage among the Yorkshire moors. There, they share with Branwell and youngest sister Anne a childhood strictly religious yet rich in ways to grow their imagination. Sibling rivalry works in tandem with sibling devotion from childhood through adulthood. Anne is the quiet, steady observer whose chance for a normal bourgeois life ends with the early death of her conventional suitor. Always-hungry Charlotte is aggressive and ambitious but somewhat sociable. Her authorial success is touted here mainly for its financial, not literary, value. Introvert Emily, who rarely talks outside the family circle, is the family’s creative genius and iconoclastic thinker, and Branwell’s early promise of brilliance is derailed by his emotional imbalance. Powell’s Emily bases the character of Heathcliff not on Branwell, but on a darkly handsome, crudely masculine farmer she first encounters as a boy on the moor, then as a man in increasingly suggestive scenes in which they never directly interact. To Emily, happiness is an elusive, even impossible option. Even her imaginative play offers more solace than joy.
Even fans of the Brontës’ wonderful novels won’t find much to cheer for in Powell’s depressing account.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661092
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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