Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks

Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1977 and it’s the sequel to the author’s Dark Quartet.

This book begins with Charlotte paying a visit to her friend of many years Ellen. Charlotte had thrown herself into work in an attempt to fill the void that had appeared with the death of Emily, Anne and Branwell in quick succession. Even the well-loved curate Willie Weightman had died unexpectedly.

Ellen’s neighbourhood is agog, there’s a rumour that Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre. She didn’t bother to disguise the many characters that she had taken from real life, and readers had recognised them, alarmingly sometimes they had recognised themselves, and Charlotte would be thrown into the company of some of those people at Ellen’s.

She’s very glad to get away from Haworth though and her increasingly tyrranical and selfish father. He’s terrified that she’ll leave him, a few men have been showing an interest in her, but Charlotte isn’t really interested, apart from anything else, she finds one of them repulsive, he has red hair and freckles!! (so have I) I wonder if he really existed as it is a typical way of a writer making a character instantly unlikeable.

She has been taken up by some celebrities of the day, particularly Thackeray and Mrs Gaskell of course and she finds a sort of happiness, but can’t stay away from Haworth for too long, her father is furious about being left with just the servants to look after him. But he’s even more angry when he realises that his curate is interested in Charlotte. Of course Patrick believes that Charlotte’s constitution isn’t strong enough for marriage and its inevitable consequences. Sadly he was correct. This was an enjoyable read

The author had access to lots of letters written by Charlotte to her friends so I’m not sure how much of her imagination she had to use. We have Charlotte’s husband Arthur to thank for the personal belongings and letters that he conserved on her death, realising they would be important to people in years to come, you can even see her spectacles and wee bits of jewellery displayed in the Haworth Parsonage, along with pens, a writing slope and clothing.

However the idea of the Brontes remaining anonymous writers for long was shot down by one of the Haworth guides when we visited. The post office is still where it was when the Brontes were sending off their many manuscripts to lots of different publishers, it’s a stone’s throw from the parsonage, and they were being returned to the parsonage under the surname Bell. There are no secrets in such a small community and you can be sure that the post-master/mistress and anyone else in the queue at the post office will have noticed all those parcels being sent off by the sisters, possibly Branwell was the only one who didn’t know what was going on!

From the Guardian Review

I’ve been so busy recently, doing this and that involving hiring a van and moving furniture we’ve just bought, so it was only tonight that I got a chance to sit down and read the Guardian Review section. It’s the bicentenary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth, so there’s an article about Jane Eyre and comments from various writers and artists on their thoughts about Jane Eyre. You can read them all here. I have to say that I’m a Jane Eyre fan rather than Wuthering Heights, although I enjoyed that one too, it didn’t have such an impact on me as Jane did. Which camp are you in Jane or Wuthering?

If you’ve been enjoying reading Hilary Mantel’s books you might be interested in reading about her working day here.

If knickers and undergarments are what get you going you might be interested in reading about the new V&A exhibition that has just opened in London called Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear. You can read about it here. The article is by Lucy Worsley who no doubt is a knowledgeable historian but she does have a penchant for diving into the dressing up box given half a chance, like an over enthusiastic four year old.

Links from the Guardian Review

It’s a wee while since I shared some links from the Guardian review section with you, but I think you might be quite interested in some from this week’s edition.

Firstly there’s an article titled Charlotte’s web by Claire Harman which you can read here. It’s about Charlotte Bronte and her crush on Paul Heger which inspired her to write Villette.

There’s an article here by Bill Bryson. Can you believe that it’s 20 years since he wrote Notes from a Small Island?

You can read Mark Lawson’s review of Ruth Rendell’s last book Dark Corners here.

Read Melanie McGrath’s review of Ian Rankin’s latest Rebus novel Even Dogs in the Wild here if you’re a fan.

Christobel Kent has reviewed Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling here.

Last but not least there’s an article by David Mitchell about Ursula K Le Guin and her Earthsea books which you can read here. I didn’t read the Earthsea books until I was an adult and I really got into the series, which is more than I can say for Tolkien’s books, so I was glad to read that Mitchell is a fan of Le Guin.

It was a rich seam of bookish stuff in the Review section this week as far as I’m concerned anyway, the above is just a selection which interested me most. I hope you enjoy some of it too.