Merry Wanderer of the Night:
bronte challenge

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Charlotte Bronte, but about one year ago when I tried to read Villette

I could not succeed. I'm not sure what stopped me from finishing it, but I got exactly halfway and put it down. After finishing it this time around I can guarantee it was entirely circumstantial.

Our heroine is Lucy Snowe, a British woman who has recently moved to the fictional city of Villette. The country is based on Brussels, which means that everyone speaks French. The bulk of the novel takes place in this fictional city, but before that we see a younger Lucy Snowe. In her younger years she watches her godmother's son Graham Bretton and a visiting girl named Polly begin a strange romance but Polly is taken away shortly before Lucy leaves. Not too long after Lucy moves to Villette where she his hired as an English instructor in a girls' school.

This is where she meets Dr. John, the man on every woman's mind but who is mainly interested in Lucy's student, Ginevra Fanshawe. Ginevra is horribly spoiled and deceitful. Lucy tries to pull her out of these habits, but to no avail. There is also M. Paul who appears to be rude and hot tempered, and somewhat frightening. He and Lucy work closely together, but typical to Lucy's narration the reader does not truly know her opinion of M. Paul for the majority of the novel.

So yes, narration. Let's talk about that. Lucy can also be a bit deceitful, well actually she just withholds information from us. This creates a very bizarre ending and a few confusing points in the novel, but it always kept me guessing. And this combined with the extremely feminist images throughout the novel made this an excellent read. I still favor Jane Eyre, but I was really interested in the strange ideas and dreams Lucy has. At some points her emotions seem so heightened. Such as when she is looking at art, or after she comes in from the garden at night. And this book has some creepy Gothic elements that made it fun as well as intriguing. Which is why...

This novel earned an A. This first A of the year!

I read this book as part of the All About the Brontes Challenge.

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Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair

is an amazing book for any book lover, and especially for a Jane Eyre fan like myself. It is the first novel in the Thursday Next series. Thursday is a literary detective living in London. The novel takes place in a different universe where Russia and England have been fighting for an extended period of time. At the beginning of the novel she is investigating the novel Martin Chuzzlewit and almost hast tracked down the criminal who has been messing with the book, Hades, when she is injured. She survives because of a copy of Jane Eyre in her breast pocket, and when she awakes she finds materials left from Rochester.

This isn't the first time Thursday has seen Rochester. When she was a young girl she went into the story and saw Rochester and Jane's meeting, forever altering the reaction of Rochester's dog Pilot. In the world Thursday lives in Jane Eyre ended quite differently from the way we know the story. In her world Jane ends up marrying her dopey cousin St. John. This is about all we know and hear of Jane Eyre for the majority of the novel, which I must admit made me sad. I mostly kept reading to find out what was going to happen with the book. I will say that I loved Thursdays character though, and I enjoyed the book the whole way through even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Thursday decides to return to her childhood home to find the villainous Hades. Here she is confronted with several obstacles, but is particularly bothered by her old boyfriend Landen Parke-Laine. Landen wants to get back together with Thursday, and she would comply if she could only get past what she feels was the betrayal of her brother. Landen, Thursday, and her brother all fought in the war together. Landen outed her brother for a mistake after his death which Thursday has never been able to forgive Landen for.

This was a great read with lots of fun puns and literary wonder. It took me a little while to get into but I think I will pick up the next in the Thursday Next series sometime in the future.

Pub. Date: February 2003

Publisher: Penguin Group

Format: Paperback, 384 pp

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

When I found out about Laura's Reviews' All About the Brontes Challenge I became overwhelmed with the amount of books I want to read about the Brontes. It is really my favorite topic and I have several books that I haven't gotten around to reading because I've been to busy. So I've come up with a list of the bare minimum I want to read, mostly books I already have. Yes, this is the bare minimum. I'm really a Bronte nerd. The challenge runs from January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2010.

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life by Lyndall Gordon
The Three Brontes by May Sinclair
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fford
The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James