Customer Reviews

Burning Bright

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Chevalier sets her sights on the poet, mystic, and engraver William Blake in London during the year 1792. Blake is an odd duck. The story is told from the viewpoints of some neighbors, in particular, two families, one recently moved from the country (the INNOCENT) and a streetwise and hardened family (the EXPERIENCED).

Thus we have the metaphor for Blake's great work SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE. The French Revolution was underway and King George was terrified that his subjects would rebel against him. Mobs circulated collecting signatures on loyalty oaths. This excessive and intimidating barrage of bogus patriotism is eerily reminiscent of some of the things we saw in this country after 9/11. Do you remember all the cars with flags?

It's a lovely story and she tells it well. Is it GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING? No. Should it be? No. An author should not have to wear her most successful book like a millstone around her neck.

Enjoy it for itself.

I finished this book quickly, it held my attention well enough but I kept waiting for the plot to "kick in" and it never did. The ending was a complete let down. In fact, after I read the book, I kept wondering what the point of the book was-it really wasn't about William Blake who was portrayed as more of a backdrop. It just seemed to be a a year's chronicle of a small section of neighbors in London preceding the French Revolution. Other than Maggie, the characters were flat and somewhat undeveloped...you wanted to know and care about them, but it just never happened. Extremely disappointing book from a very good writer.

Tracy Chevalier brilliantly brought to life the 17th-century world of the Netherlands in the fictional biography of Johannes VerMeer in GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. Now, in BURNING BRIGHT, she turns her spell-weaving skills toward painter, poet and visionary William Blake in 18th-century London.

Maisie Kellaway, daughter of a woodworker, has just moved with her older brother Jem and her parents from a North Country village to an upscale London row house owned by her father's new employer, Phillip Astley, of the famous Astley Circus. Her father, a skilled chair maker, seeks a better life for his family by working as a carpenter for the circus. Maisie is befriended by street-wise Maggie Butterfield, the daughter of a con artist and rogue who lives in a rough nearby neighborhood. Maggie is a few years older than Maisie and has her eye on Jem.

The Kellaways live next door to William Blake and his wife, who are shunned yet regarded with fearful respect by their neighbors. The story is set against the far-off rumblings of the French Revolution, a cause in which Blake seems to sympathize. As a poet and an engraver, Blake's obscure prolific publications perplex even the most erudite Englishmen, but they seem to impart the sense of lust for freedom and equality roiling on the continent that the fervid Royalists of the age see as seditious.

Maisie, Jem and Maggie begin to spend time in the Blake garden, as their landlady won't allow renters in her formal backyard. Blake does not outwardly try to influence the young people, but he and his wife encourage them to learn to read, and his poetry is all they have at hand aside from the Bible.

Blake's role in the book, while pivotal, is not as central to the story as was VerMeer's in GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. Servitude and class distinctions are not as strictly drawn in the late 18th century as they were in the 1600s. As the 1700s draw to a close, a new awareness of the power of the masses is on the horizon. As the French Revolution grows, so does its threat of spreading to England. When Maggie's Royalist boss at the vinegar factory intimidates his employees into signing a petition in support of King George, she manages to slip away without doing so. She heads for the local pub where her mother, father and brother hang out.

The boss shows up at the pub and declares that dissenters to signing the petition are traitors to the crown and may suffer the same consequences as the French Revolutionaries if they don't support the king. When a few in the pub, including Maisie's father, stand up to the man, they are threatened with a visit to their homes. Maggie is shocked when her own father so easily bends to the will of the petitioner. She follows Maisie and her father to their home. Soon, a torch-bearing throng marches down the street where the Kellaways and Blake live. They confront Blake at his doorway, and when Blake staunchly refuses to sign, a riot breaks out. What follows seals the fate of our young heroes.

Chevalier is adept at evoking a powerful sense of time and place. In GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, one could almost see the muted hues of the city of Delft, which so influenced VerMeer's paintings. In BURNING BRIGHT, Chevalier conjures the sights and sounds of 1792 London, shrouded in fog and coal smoke, and bustling with street vendors, charlatans, prostitutes and thieves. She captures ordinary people at the dawn of the radical changes in social, moral and political opinion that will shape the centuries to come.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

Tracy Chevalier is a skilled writer whose novels have all been historical, built around a famous personage from the chosen time period. In Burning Bright, that person is William Blake, the rather mystical English poet/philosopher/engraver, but his presence is intermittent. This novel focuses upon two late-18th century London families, one newly arrived from Dorset and the other more established. Both are poor, struggling to get by, and the plot is built around the adolescent children of these families. Characterization is one of Chevalier's strengths, and Maisie, Jem, and Maggie quickly charm the reader, while others, notably John Astley (the dastardly villain of the piece), Charlie, and the bigoted landlady. Circus folk, pub denizens, washerwomen, and the like add plenty of dash and color. A feel for life in London during the French Revolution quickly develops. Thematically, the concepts of opposites, the conundrum of what's in the middle of each opposing pair, and the drive toward symmetry, are all recurrent ideas, taken from Blake's own work.
Burning Bright provides hours of intelligent, pleasurable, and at times, thought provoking reading.

This was a book I listened to as I drove to Arizona. The fact that the drive was boring and the landscape barren made the book fairly enjoyable. Not a prize winner by any stretch of the imagination, the story portrays Georgian England competently and gives the listener a glimpse into the everyday lives of "average" folks. We experience every aspect of their lives and work as well as the influence of the French Revolution on their existence. The reading by Jill Tanner is adequate (although I could have lived without her singing the three or four bawdy pub songs that were peppered throughout the book).

As others have indicated, this is NOT "The Girl With A Pearl Earring" in which Vermeer was a central character. Those purchasing the book with the belief that it will tell the story of poet, artist and printer William Blake will be sadly disappointed. His appearance in the novel can best be compared to standing on a railway platform as a train goes by and looking at the people on the platform across the way. You only catch a fleeting glimpse between the passing cars. So also with Blake.... he is a mere "footnote" in this book as he makes appearances here and there and acts as mentor of sorts to the Kellaway and Butterfield children, who are in truth the central characters of the story. The children do, however, act as a sort of catalyst in inspiring the poet to create one of his most famous poems, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience".

In reality, this is part coming of age tale, part story of young love, with a side trip to examine the anguish of being an independent thinker in an era when dissidents were looked upon with great suspicion.

Not the best book on tape you will ever listen to, but good enough to keep you from falling asleep at the wheel. Two and a half stars.

Please do not let the previous reviews stop you from reading the latest from Tracy Chevalier. I have never written a book review but the other reviews on this book made me feel that I had an obligation. It is a very enjoyable read. I almost let the reviews sway me into not reading it and I would have been missing a good book. As said before, it may not be another "Girl" but what could ever be? This book is wonderful in it's own right and definitely worth your time.

I suspect that if you have never read any of Tracy Chevalier's work, you'll like this book better than if you are a fan. Burning Bright intensely develops London with a sense of place that you won't find exceeded in too many novels based in the 1790s. But with London being such a big part of the book, you may find the plot and the characters pale by comparison. That's why I rated the book at three stars.

If you loved Girl with a Pearl Earring and carry with you the joy that you gained from learning about Vermeer and painting, I suspect you'll think that Burning Bright is more like a two-star book. Other than his sympathies for the French Revolution, you won't know much more about Blake when the book ends than when it began (except for a few glimpses of his personal quirks).

Those who will love this book best will be those who want to know about Philip Astley and Astley's Circus. Astley was the founder of the modern circus and cut quite a colorful figure in English society at the time. Ms. Chevalier's fictional characters are intimately tied to Astley, his son, and the circus.

You'll spend most of your time following the Kellaway family (father, Thomas, a maker of fine chairs; mother, Anne, a button maker and homemaker; daughter, Maisie, apprentice button maker; and Jem, son, apprenticed to his father) as they leave rural Dorset to follow up on Astley's promise of sponsorship for their chair making if they come to London. Astley, with prodding, makes good and the Kellaways are soon tenants in an Astley building. We see London through their fresh eyes.

To draw the contrast between rural people and Londoners, Ms. Chevalier develops another fictional family, the Butterfields, whose father, Dick, runs scams, whose son, Charlie, is an unenthusiastic scamster in training, whose mother, Bet, is a washerwoman, and whose daughter, Maggie, works in factory jobs and as a washerwoman, too. The families are mainly connected through Jem and Maggie who become friends.

William Blake and his wife are neighbors of the Kellaways. The two mostly make cameo appearances except for a few occasions where Blake discusses philosophy with Jem and Maggie. As the book ends, Blake has become attached to the two and provides a valuable gift for each.

William Blake is the poet I most often quote in my books. He has a timeless ability to capture the essence of modern ironies . . . especially the way that our perspective captures our ability to perceive and enjoy. Knowing his poetic works quite well, I looked forward to gaining a deeper appreciation. Just the opposite happened; there was so little Blake, the poet, in the book that I felt him disappearing from my perception.

This tyger needed to burn a lot brighter than it did.

I've read all of her books and this was disappointing. Normally, I can't put them down, but this took awhile to get through. It seemed to drag in the middle and the end was predictable. The language was confusing many times and parts weren't explained well, which I've never had a problem with in previous books. Overall, not my favorite one by her.

This is one of my favorite authors. I could hardly wait to open Burning Bright and get lost in London of the 1700's. Well, lost I got! Each page was more and more boring. I read 3/4th of the book and donated it to the library. After reading the other reviews I am glad I didnt finish the book and be completely disappointed with the weak ending.

After reading Girl with a Pearl Earring I picked up "Burning Bright" and was very let down. I agree with other reviewers, the characters are too emphasized where William Blake is too much of a vague reference, almost as if Tracy Chevalier was afraid to assign him dialogue in case she be proved wrong. I truly didn't care for any of the characters and was always hoping some*thing* would happen. There was no climatic ending, it fizzled out and a nice bow tied things up. It's obvious Chevalier puts effort into creating a realistic era. Needed a lot of work on plot, dialogue and action/events.

I'd skip this one.