A Girl Walks Into a Book What the Brontës Taught Me about Life, Love, and Women's Work by Miranda Pennington

It is beautiful everytime.

When you fall into a book that speak of past and literature with the ability of bringing us somewhere else. In a world where there was a different education, different manners, different customs a life less frenetic, but, attention where problems existed.

A Girl Walks Into a Book What the Brontës Taught Me about Life, Love, and Women's Work by Miranda Pennington will be published this May 16 by Perseus.

It it not only very well written but this memoir tell like the  Brontë with Jane Eyre followed step-by-step  the existence of Miranda Peddington.

Miranda took inspiration by these sisters, their example, their re-start, their lessons, their life, their being eclectic and genial in a com-penetration of expectations and feelings and knowledge of herself, her world and her feelings.

Jane Eyre is a masterpiece because it's a unique tale of love, dedication, responsibility.
Someone at the end was chosen also in his disability: Mr.Rochester.
This one a universal message of real love.

Jane was young.
When she discovered that Mr.Rochester became blind at the end of the book she could have escaped away from a future of responsibility, but she didn't.
She did not go away because she loved him and she stayed, because she simply knew that that man was her man and she didn't want anyone else, whatever it would have meant, because she would have been happy with him.
It's a strong message, one of the most powerful message: real love exists.
It's not just a wonderful work of fiction, love, for let us cry when we read a romantic book or we watch a movie on TV with the happy end: no. these stories exist in real life. And Jane Eyre is a strong book. Not only: Jane Eyre is a masterpiece written in a wonderful stylistic way.

The words, lines contained in Jane Eyre are beautiful, lyrical, elevated, real expression of great soul and heart and these words resonate after centuries with the same strength and power of its time, remaining intact in the emotive impact that they generate in people's soul.

The story of Mr. Rochester, the complex, sometimes rude character, created in Jane Eyre deluded and hard because of a heavy past and some hidden secrets (a wife kept hidden for obvious reasons) with the desire to re-start a new life is very interesting to me.

He knew that he had found with Jane the right girl but what to do?

Telling or not telling the truth?

More adult than her, he preferred to keep this secret in his soul losing her, and losing her meant only disgraces and ruin for both these characters, because no one clarified, no one explained and the unsaid created a catastrophic result.

Jane went away without to trying to understand, thinking that after all there was another woman, a wife kept secret! and betrayed by the man she was trusting and with which she was ready to spend the rest of her existence with.

At the same time maybe Jane thought: "How can I love a man with under his roof also his legal wife? Why wasn't he clear after all?" A lot of turmoil.  Other people knew but no one told her the truth and this one wasn't a little particular but a fundamental aspect of Rochester's life. Where was trust? Clarity? Just silence. It was too much.

Months ago I read and reviewed a novel I love so badly written by Sarah Jio, Always, that to me, different times, modern tale, was very similar in the message contained in Jane Eyre: to re-embrace again the first love although changed, and with problems.

The book by Miranda Pennington is plenty of informations about all the sisters Bronte, with the scheme of all the family Bronte and the detailed history of all of them. You will find many pictures of their books/manuscripts thanks to her numerous visit at museums where Miranda found a lot of material,  informations, letters exchanged with editors, other writers and last but not least there is this dialogue, constant with this superlative work: Jane Eyre and what it means to her.

It's a trip into literature, it's a trip into psychology as well.

Miranda Pennington talked of Elizabeth Gaskell because she add according to her the sisters' Bronte portrayed under a "negative light." I read and discovered Elizabeth Gaskell for case, picking up North and South at the library two years ago. What a wonderful and relaxing book it was that one as well.
The splendid and positive words contained in North and South, the good feelings expressed, the contrast between the British dreaming countryside and the city, the complexities of problematic that the protagonists will  sort out with irony and good sentiments let me think she was another exceptional writer.

Miranda grew up with the powerful influence of Jane Eyre, much more than all the other books by the other sisters Bronte or other authors for teenager.

She tells she received  the book when she was 10 years old. This book Jane Eyre in grade read and reread a lot of times, at different ages to give to her the most important answers to her questions that she was/is searching for, still guiding her along her life.

That answers that we must add only a classics can give to a reader.


Highly recommended book!


Anna Maria Polidori