Customer Reviews

Four Dreamers and Emily

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a beautiful novel; funny, tender, poignant.Over it all is the spirit of Emily Bronte herself; but it is also a story of four lives touched by Emily's greatness, each flawed in their own way yet most sympathetic.The novel is compulsively readable, with a light touch yet a pervasive sense of tragedy.It is also in the tradition of spoof academia, a la AS Byatt or David Lodge, and the description of the Bronte conference is hilarious.Highly recommended

I enjoyed this book tremendously. The plot revolves around four people from varied backgrounds who are all interested, to some extent, in Emily Bronte. Their lives become intetwined and changed by each other, mostly through surprising effects of simple often unintentional acts of kindness.

While many social issues are referenced there is nothing strident or pedantic about this book, humor abounds throughout! To top it off the writing is exquisite and I will be lining up to read her next, should she be kind enough to write another!

In the vein of "Moo", this book sends up several academic types, each in their own search for Emily Bronte at a conference dedicated to her in England. The writer manages to be touching, as well as funny, in her portrayal of the characters' relationships.

In this novel we meet four characters, three of whom have their own imagined relationship with Emily Brontė. Eileen Nussey James is single, over sixty and a self-professed expert on the Brontės and passion. Marion Pendlebury is, with limited success, juggling her roles as a wife, mother and lecturer. Timothy Whitty, aged, widowed and ill is sustained by his occasional nocturnal visits from the ghost of Emily Brontė, and his correspondence with Marianne. And there is Sharon Mitchell, a young waitress, whose life also intersects with Marianne's. The dreamers are drawn together at a conference on the Brontės (in Haworth, naturally) organised by Marion, and their lives are changed by their experiences.

This is a delightfully humorous story. The contrast and conflict between their dreams and their lives speaks to both the power of literature, and of the delusion of imagined relationships. Why else would one of them forge Emily Brontė's signature on a watercolour because it should be there?
Of course, my primary motivation for reading this novel was to feed my own obsession with Emily Brontė. The irony of this does not entirely escape me. This is a quick, fun read for anyone who has ever obsessed about an author, or perhaps wondered about the power of such authors to continue speak to us even when they are long dead in every physical sense.

Stevie Davies is both a Brontė scholar and an accomplished writer of fiction.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I tried very hard to get into this description of four rather different people who have one thing in common: an obsession with Emily Bronte. They meet at a conference about her work and just....well, I had hoped the book would get interesting when they finally meet, but it really didn't. I gave up and skimmed to the end. Quite disappointing, actually. I didn't identify with or care about any of the characters, and, as it turns out, I don't really care about Emily Bronte.

While I am more familiar with Stevie's non-fiction works, including the indispensible Emily Bronte: Heretic, I found this novel to be absolutely delightful.

Even though I found the style to be a little narrative-heavy in places, Four Dreamers manages to entertain at every level. Anyone who has attended Bronte conferences or even joined Bronte listgroups on the Net, will recognize the spectrum of zany zealots that Stevie presents here. Incredibly, while the wackiness of the competing 'definitive theories' may seem laughably far-fetched, it is in fact, frighteningly representative of the reality.

Very strong characters, and a beautifully woven story, although I found the ending, though evocative, to be somewhat anti-climactic.

Two thumbs up... (Gorgeous photo of Stevie on the back cover flap.)