Emma Brown

I've had a galley of Emma Brown sitting on my shelf for years. Someone asked me when I started this project if there were any books I regretted letting sit for so long. This is it! Based on an unfinished manuscript by Charlotte Bronte, the book was finished by the Irish writer Clare Boylan. This is something I usually avoid--sequels or prequels to classic books written by other, usually lesser, writers. This, however, was a pretty good execution of one author filling in for another.

Bronte wrote the first two chapters of the book, and they were published in a magazine after her death. Matilda Fitzgibbon arrives under mysterious circumstances to a fledgling boarding school run by three spinster sisters. Yes, it's a Bronte novel with a boarding school. And yes, someone gets locked in an attic. But the mystery that unfolds as a few kind strangers try to discover who Matilda really is, and where she goes after she disappears, is captivating. The underbelly of Victorian London is exposed--especially the plight of poor children and orphans. In fact, the only time you can really tell the novel was written in the twenty-first instead of the nineteenth century is when Boylan rails against these harsh conditions. One review I read criticized it for relying heavily on coincidence, but I just thought that made it feel more authentic.

Now, if only someone could so convincingly complete Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood.