Emily's Ghost: A Novel of the Brontė Sisters - Hardcover

Giardina, Denise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039306915X ISBN 13: 9780393069150

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

A lustrous, beautifully written reimagining of the Brontė family―and of Emily Brontė’s passionate engagement with life.

Enigmatic, intelligent, and fiercely independent, Emily Brontė refuses to bow to the conventions of her day: she is distrustful of marriage, prefers freedom above all else, and walks alone at night on the moors above the isolated rural village of Haworth. But Emily’s life, along with the rest of the Brontė family, is turned upside down with the arrival of an idealistic clergyman named William Weightman. Weightman champions poor mill workers’ rights, mingles with radical labor agitators, and captivates Haworth―and the Brontės especially―with his energy and charm. An improbable friendship between Weightman and Emily develops into a fiery but unconsummated love affair―and when tragedy strikes, the relationship continues, like the love story at the heart of Wuthering Heights, beyond the grave.Denise Giardina, whose fiction has been described as “brilliant. . . heart-wrenching, tough and tender” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), writes a stirring story about faith, passion, longing, and romantic solitude.

About this title

About the Author:

Denise Giardina is the author of Storming Heaven, Emily's Ghost, and Saints and Villains, which won the Boston Book Review Prize. She is an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church and lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Giardina (Saints and Villains) offers Brontė fans a solid biographical novel portraying sisters Anne, Charlotte and Emily as different in temperament but in love with the same man, fighting the same illnesses and withdrawing from the same grim realities to write poetry and fiction that express their individual passions. Youngest sister Emily distinguishes herself at age six when, while attending boarding school, she admits to encounters with ghosts. (The punishment doled out by the headmaster does not deter Emily, but it does inspire a well-known scene in Jane Eyre.) Brontė men include brother Branwell, who struggles with addiction; father Patrick, straining to support his family on limited finances; and William Weightman, Patrick's young, flirtatious, social-reforming curate who becomes the key figure as he wins the hearts of the three Brontė girls. Giardina's mid-19th-century England is factually sturdy, while the relationship between Emily and Weightman is nicely nuanced, and the insights and inferences about Emily and Charlotte's relationship are convincingly rendered. You don't have to be a Brontė scholar to appreciate Giardina's novel, but having a little context will greatly increase the payoff. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 039306915X
• ISBN 13: 9780393069150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336