Customer Reviews

The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte: The Secrets of a Mysterious Family : A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I could somehow manage to read this book! I laughed at the too-much simple characterization of Bronte sisters: Charlotte the Evil, Emily the Good and Anne the Obscure. First of all, I was confused with the contradictory characters. Emily, who "loved all living creatures", could pass Nicholls' murder of her brother in silence. Nicholls was so ambitious that he would not marry a daughter of a mere country rector, but at last he was much satisfied to be a farmer in Ireland. This is a part of the contradictions. There are much more contradictions in this novel I do not wish to pass. This writer says that all Bronte works largely depend on Nicholls (who wrote only blunt letters in his life). What an absurd idea! I desperately wish this story could have a little more attractive ,either good or bad, characters and a little bit thrilling plot, not quite boring one! This novel taught me that one cannot make a pulling story, only with the name of famous people.

James Tully dedicates his book, "Para mi querida J...--who I met when she was but seventeen and have loved deeply for some fifty years." Despite the sentimentality of this dedication, the book itself is deeply misogynistic. All the women are silly, devious, or both; gossipy, snoopy, ridiculously docile, and melting in the snares of a handsome man to commit atrocities--or else shrewish enough to drive him to murder. And worse--they are plagiarists! Tully would have us believe the Bronte sisters stole the work of poor, doomed, haunted brother Branwell, passed it off as their own, and then blackened Branwell's sainted name. Tully's evidence for this? The testimony of a couple of Branwell's pub cronies many years after the fact and when all the Brontes were safely dead. It is typical of the kind of "evidence" Tully provides to support his wild conjectures throughout the book. Smarmy remarks like, "Now, I am a mere male, but..." also do not help Tully make his case.

All this would probably be acceptable--controversy is the meat of literature, after all--if the "novel" was at least well written. It is, in fact, woefully bad--the narrative is flat, repetitive, indirect, while the characterizations are paper thin or stereotyped. Worst of all, each chapter consists of a supposed deposition from Bronte maid Martha Brown followed by commentary from a present-day investigator. This structure seriously bogs down the flow of the story and repeats the material just reviewed by Martha to tedious effect. I suspect the information provided by the present-day investigator, an ill-defined solicitor character, is simply a dumping ground for the nonfiction book Tully wanted to write (by his own admission) and couldn't sell because the case he presented for the Bronte "crimes" was so meager, thereby making his wild conclusions laughable. Unfortunately, there is nothing laughable about this novel--it is so bad it doesn't even inspire true irony.

This "novel" (warning: about to give the "plot" away) purports to be based on a diary of the Bronte family's servant, Martha Brown and is supposed to be the true account of how the Bronte sisters "mysteriously" died; supposedly, Arthur Bell Nichols (Mr. Bronte's curate, who after a long courtship married Charlotte) and Charlotte colluded in poisoning Emily and Anne, and then Nichols finished off Charlotte in a like manner. The "diary" portions of the story are interspersed with commentary and/or narrative by an attorney, Charles Coutts, who is supposed to have found the diary sometime after WWII. As a novel, it is pretty pale. The author does not even attempt to give Martha Brown an authentic-sounding voice, and the attorney's role is to reinterpret the standard Bronte biography in terms of the new "facts" Martha Brown reveals - for example, that Nichols got Emily pregnant and that was why he had to do her in. As a re-interpretation of the Bronte sisters' well-known biography, this book is irresponsible, unconvincing, and disgusting. Most people who have written about the Brontes have revealed that these lives were marked by staggering loneliness, depression, illness, and bereavement - along with remarkable creativity, piety, devotion to family, and sense of duty. The author of this book (deservedly obscure) apparently has no respect either for suffering, or the ability to transcend suffering.

Having read a preview of this book and being a great Bronte fan, I looked forward to reading Mr. Tully's premises. Sorry I bothered. The only intriguing premise concerned the writing of Wuthering Heights. It is very hard to believe that Martha was so omnipotaent and that Nichols was such an ass. Patrick Bronte must have been deaf and dumb, as well as the whole township of Haworth to let this happen. A waste of money and time.

I picked this book up as a bargain, and thought, "heck, this could be interesting." I have read and studied most of the sisters' works, as well as a couple of biographies (including the Frasier tome). I enjoy a good mystery, too, and that is ultimately how I regard this book: A fairly decent mystery, but in some ways unsatisfactory. The storyline rushes through a lot of perhaps trivial information that may have been better to gloss over or condense somewhat. After all, as a work of fiction, does Tully need to specifically list all of Charlotte's travels? They do nothing to further the story along, and the reader is left feeling like they'd just read the "begats" out of the Bible.

The main character, Martha, is an unreliable narrator. Because she has a personal interest in the story, she cannot tell the story objectively; perhaps Tully meant this as a contrast to Emily Bronte's more authoritative narrator in Wuthering Heights. About halfway through the book, Martha realizes what is going on with the family deaths, but instead of being repelled by the murderer, she continues with her life as it is, and passively aids and abets him according to her own petty desires. Nicholls is not so compelling and Svengali-like as Tully would like to portray him, and as such, you simply cannot see what Martha finds all that fascinating about him, apart from a good roll in the hay. As a reader, I felt cheated. Up to that point, the story was actually quite interesting, but after Anne's death, the book drags with some rather dull, almost list-like repetition of travels and speculation. The end seems like a limp wringing of an old dishrag that's been over-used. Tully could have wrapped it up much more quickly and have spared the reader a rather dull hour.

One thing that bothered me as a reader was how nobody managed to get pregnant in this book. According to Tully, Nicholls an apparently rather lusty Lothario who was willing to perform in even the most inconvenient of locations. He was also either infertile, or they had better birth control in Haworth than we do with modern medicine today. How Martha managed to avoid pregnancy over a 20 year period is beyond me. Tully's provides no real answers for this in the story, and his modern lawyer narrator is surprisingly silent on the matter.

As someone who has studied literature and life of this period, the book falls far short. People did not behave then as they do now, and this particular book is very modern in feel. While Tully effectively conveys the bleak and lonely aspect of Haworth and how one can feel trapped there, he does not convey a feel for the times. And that, I think, is the most disappointing part of the book. There were times when I had a hard time differentiating between Martha and the lawyer's footnotes at the end of each chapter...the voices were too similar. The laywer's voice was decidedly modern, and when Tully switches back to Martha's voice, it is not all that different, or even all that feminine. Martha is actually quite unsympathetic, and even though Charlotte is portrayed as a harridan, it isn't strong enough to merit Martha's hatred and passive resistance.

Why did Tully present this book as fiction? I believe that he found enough interesting material to make a plausible story, but no smoking gun or incontrovertible fact to hold up in court. I think Tully feels that there are millions who would rise up in arms against him and beat him to death with his own books. As a reader of true crime, I found some of his theories interesting. Am I going to accept them and go on some crusade? No. But I might do a little reading on my own to refresh my memory regarding the lives of the Brontes and ponder whether Tully's ideas regarding them are arguable.

I might even share this book with a friend or two.

I was intrigued by this book when I recently saw it in the bookstore. The description and questions on the back caught my eye (How did three sisters in a remote parsonage know so much about the darker passions of love?), and made me curious enough to purchase it then and there. I must admit I was immediately drawn in by the introduction and the lawyer's description of his find. As a fan of the Bronte sisters, who wouldn't be thrilled with such a discovery? If only the rest of the book lived up to its beginning, or even, the questions that raised my curiosity in the first place.

On the back of the book, it is explained to us that the author, James Tully, although a "noted criminologist", chose to write this story as a novel. The introduction is written by a lawyer in the firm that had this story sealed, and we are asked to compare this narration to the popular version of the Bronte tale, and see which one seems to be the more likely of the two. The story then unfolds as young Martha, a maid in the Bronte parsonage, tells tale of all the happenings at Haworth over almost two decades. Her retelling is concluded at each chapter by the lawyer's conjecture of truths (or shall I say "truths") that add veracity to Martha's story. Martha's story lets us know about the evil doings of Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte's husband, who had his hand in the mysterious deaths that occured at Haworth parsonage, including Charlotte's herself.

Tully has an interesting theory. It does seem strange and mysterious how three members of the Bronte clan died in such a short span of time and with similar symptoms. He raises some questions that might make you question what you know to be true about the Brontes. Yet this novel is far from enligtening or even satisfactory. I was disappointed when I finished reading. However, I am left with only one question after finishing this novel. If there is any truth to these accusations, why would a criminologist write this as fiction, and not as fact? Written as fiction, it reads as such.

On the book jacket its says that "so dark and unexpected were the results of his research, he decided to tell the story in the form of a novel". Maybe it was because his research was shoddy and he had nothing with which to substantiate his ridiculous theories. One of his absurd theories is that had Bramwell been raised in a normal family with a mother's love it is likely that he would now have more fame and respect than his sisters. Even if the family was not normal, it certainly did not prevent his sisters from becoming famous and respected. Do I detect a little bit of old fashioned male chauvinism on Mr. Tully's part?

The literary plan of the book made it difficult to follow; did Martha Brown really exist? The plan of the book made it difficult to know what was true or what was fiction. He started off with a bang and ended with a thud. A very highly improbable story.'

This book was such a waste of time to read! I can't believe the library spent money buying it-but better them than me.

The crimes imputed to Charlotte Bronte are nothing compared to those perpetrated by Mr. Tully in writing this book. He begins with a silly premise, and presents it badly. Granted, he is not a professional novelist. However,the absurd dialogue and plot development read like the work of a (not overly talented) high school student. If he has any derious knowledge of the Brontes' lives and work, little is betrayed in this trivial volume. According to an article in the BBC's online service, the author intended it as a work of nonfiction but the publisher would only accept it if he called it a novel.

Perhaps the nonfiction approach would have been better, as Mr. Tully would have had to stick to the evidence of the alleged dirty doings at Haworth Parsonage. The book would in that case certainly have been shorter.

Or beter yet, non-existant.

Bronte fans, please don't be so blinded by your admiration that you refuse to admit the possibility of some foibles in your beloved heroines ! But DO NOT be so foolish as to waste your money on this trash ! By all means, borrow it, if you have an afternoon to waste on a story, that is mediocre as a novel, and unacceptably poorly annotated as a thesis. While a fan of the Bronte's work, I have a strong personal dislike to Charlotte because of her contempt of my own favourite Jane Austen (whose quill she is not worthy to sharpen!). I therefore looked forward to the demise of her character, in this book, only to be severely disappointed. With all the good malice in the world, I cannot accept Tully's incredible hypotheses, especially as he makes no real attempt to vindicate anything he states with documentary evidence, or source references. Like many a mediocre writer before him, he has used the names of giants to launch his own puling, pitiful attempts at literature. I am ashamed to admit that I have wasted money on this book, before I have bought a single informed, reasonable commentary on the Brontes. Do yourself a favour - buy a real biography !