The Vanished Bride - Rumours. Scandal. Danger. The Bronte sisters are ready to investigate . . . (Hardcover)

Reviews

"My review" by Breakaway R. - 9 December 2019

I wanted so much to like this book……… I wanted so much to like this book! It begins so well. The opening sequence is knowledgeable and assured, even the author’s pseudonym Bella Ellis has literary resonance. The Bronte sisters noms de plume was Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne) Bell. I was immediately delighted and engaged, settling in for a wonderful read. The author’s sense of the Bronte sisters – their very different characters and intellects, the constrained and constricted world they inhabited in which only their soaring imaginations were free, the atmosphere in the Haworth Parsonage, the depictions of Branwell and their father Patrick – all of this is excellent, vividly evoked and profoundly explored. The early sequence, in which the author describes Charlotte’s being the sole survivor of a once large and close band of siblings, is beautifully written and deeply moving. However, for me when the author moves away from the biographical into her own narrative – a Gothic tale of murder and mayhem, burning houses and mad husbands, complete with gypsy encampments and sinister servants, with the Bronte sisters as self-appointed sleuths – the assured and accomplished tone slides into a yarn that is neither pastiche nor straight storytelling. The dialogue becomes stilted, even arch, and the strong sense of character, so redolent in some places, falters and is lost. I found this book an exasperating read. As the narrative gains pace cliché follows cliché and the writing becomes patchy. The trouble with this type of tale is that it has been done before and done sublimely by the Brontes themselves and their brilliance only highlights this pallid imitation. The central idea – that the creative urge linked to trenchant observation can lead to a unique insight – is an interesting and valid one. What did not work for me was its execution. Victorian themes of madness and sanity, the complete powerlessness of women in a society in which an unfaithful wife could be incarcerated in a lunatic asylum for an indiscretion that would have gone unnoticed on the part of her spouse, the removal of children from their mother, the abuse of the servant girl, these are themes that still resonate, particularly in some parts of the world. So “The Vanished Bride” was, for me, an infuriating mishmash of serious issues and nonsense, where considered and sensitive writing is too often buried beneath a melodramatic mound so silly as to be unintentionally funny. Not one for me, but this is only my opinion. Others may feel very differently. For me, this was a bitter disappointment. It could have been wonderful and the fleeting passages when it had only made me long for a quality that was rarely apparent. Charlotte Gower Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review