Brontes revisited, one sibling at a time

If nothing else, Jude Morgan’s literary daring in taking on the lives of the Bronte sisters as the subject of his most recent novel, The Taste of Sorrow, would have been worthy of praise. It is a story that has been written many times over, and their novels themselves are so famous that most readers have a definite image in their heads of a remarkable family of women altogether — no “coward souls” they, who created Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Bertha, Cathy and Arthur Huntingdon; rather, they stand like titans in the imaginations of their audience: a trio of unsophisticated geniuses against a backdrop of bleak northern moors, cursed by tuberculosis and bad luck.

So Morgan had much to live up to at his writing desk, not least the shades of giants, and it is nice to be able to say that he has written a book worthy of them: a crashing good read, as well as being extremely well-written and researched. He seldom takes the path of re-invention, no doubt realising that as a template for tragedy, the Bronte plot could hardly be bettered: there were six Bronte siblings, of whom the longest-lived was Charlotte, dead at the age of 38. Two sisters, Maria and Elisabeth, died as children of illness brought on by harsh treatment at the school that became the model for Lowood in Jane Eyre; Branwell, the brilliant and promising brother, died an alcoholic; Emily and Anne were both dead of tuberculosis within nine months of him. Their father outlived them all.

Full review here Deccan Chronicle