Beautiful Jane Eyre

A trip to Borders last night found me purchasing this gorgoues new Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition of Jane Eyre. It is true that I do have several copies of Jane Eyre on my shelves already - but really, how could I resist??

Beautiful Classics

I don't usually receive a lot of books as gifts at Christmas - my friends and family are too fearful that they will get me a book that I already have or have read - or that they will get me something that I don't like at all. So, when we hit the shops for the post Christmas sales today I did treat myself to a couple of "Christmas Gift" books.

I couldn't go past these beautiful hard cover Penguin Classics editions of Great Expectations and Jane Eyre. I am planning on making 2010 my year of reading and re-reading Dickens so I felt that I could justify the purchase of Great Expectations and Jane Eyre was actually half price so really it was just begging to come home with me...

Holiday Books - Belated!

I have been very slack in sharing with you the books I picked up while we were travelling in September. So, not including Her Fearful Symmetry and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day which I have already blogged about, from the bottom of the pile to the top these are the books I bought while away:

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte - Syrie James, I really enjoyed her first book - The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen so I thought I would give this one a go (I have to admit that I have started it already but just couldn't get into it at this stage unfortunately).

Good Evening Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes - my other Persephone selection - I could have come home with so many more of these!

The Brontes Went To Woolworths - Rachel Ferguson, I just love this title and I have heard so many of you say great things about this one.

Dubliners - James Joyce, I have not read any of Joyce before but I heard a lot about him when we were in Ireland so I really wanted to give one of his books a go.

Chic Shopping Paris - Rebecca Perry Magniant, Just too cute to leave on the shelf really!

The Taste of Sorrow - Jude Morgan

I did not know a great deal about the lives of the Bronte family before reading The Taste of Sorrow. I had read (and loved) Daphne by Justine Picardie which reflected on the family - and in particular the only son and brother, Branwell, and one of my favourite books of all time is Jane Eyre, but apart from that I was a little in the dark.

I acknowledge that The Taste of Sorrow is fiction and is Morgan's interpretation and understanding of what may have occurred within the family but I really feel (don't ask me how!) as though the author has captured an essence of this famous family that rings true and is totally believable.

The book starts with the death of the young Bronte children's mother, and as such sets up a constant theme of the family story - death, and the sorrow that accompanies it is never far away. From this early loss the children are brought together - they become connected almost as one;

The children obediently fold their hands in prayer - they all know how to do that. Still they do not range themselves. Rather they draw together in a peculiarly precise huddle, as if they stand on a rock, just big enough for them, above an encircling sea.

Morgan creates the sense of interdependence amongst the siblings, while at the same time clearly demonstrating their individual personalities, perfectly. Throughout the book I had a strong image of each of the children growing together - even when physically apart they were connected through the creations of their imagination - and the loss that is felt when one is taken away (in actuality or metaphorically) is acute.

I found the writing throughout absolutely stunning - without wanting to sound cliched - the writing was like a beautiful piece of music - it flowed and carried you along with it. In paricular I loved reading the sections where the inner minds and outer thoughts of the character's were portrayed:

Branwell asked: 'What was it like there? Maria would never really say'.

It was a beautiful day to be on the moors. A skylark invited location somewhere above, a glinting needle of song in a haystack of blue. The turf yielded fragrantly; bees rode the warm air. But Charlotte only had to think a moment, and the cold doors clanged around her. Branwell watched her face.

'You couldn't get near the fire,' she said at last. 'The big girls shut you out so. You hung about, hoping... But mostly you had to imagine yourself warm. You had to have the fire inside'.

I tried a new method of reading with this book. I had felt so flat and despondent with my reading lately that I decided to just slow down and concentrate on one book at a time - and I chose a wonderful book to initiate this method! This book captured me completely - I didn't want to focus on anything else for fear of missing some of the magic in this book. I now want to go back and read Jane Eyre and the other Bronte novels - I will be reading them through new, more informed, lenses.