Book #88: The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë

Book #88: The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë by James Tully

May 28, 2014


This book was a disappointment for me. I did what I said I wouldn't do again: went to the library without a plan. But the premise of this book seemed interesting. See, unlike the Brontë fans who have expressed their hatred of this book, I'm not offended by the idea of Charlotte Brontë poisoning her own sister, or any if the other sinister crimes discussed in the book (like Branwell fucking a young boy...I was shocked that both narrators seemed to pity him even after this part of the story)...no, I was more disappointed at the writing style. I don't get it: is Tully trying to convince us that he's presenting facts, or is it just a story? Either way, he went about it all wrong.

If it's supposed to be true, why the fictional narratives? Martha Brown was indeed the Sexton's daughter, and did work and live at the Parsonage as a servant to the Brontë family. She also went to stay with Arthur Nicholls and his wife in Ireland, so it's not a stretch to think that the two were secretly lovers. But this whole "deposition" that she wrote (her half of the narrative) is fictional. So there wasn't a notebook written by Anne Brontë, either...the strongest points in the story are false, and frankly the author doesn't weave the fiction very well with the fact.

The other half of the narrative are the commentaries of Charles Coutts, a lawyer who finds Brown's deposition in his grandfather's old office or something. He's 100% fiction...why? He's essentially just sharing the author's own commentary. For a man who describes himself as never having had any interest in the Brontës (is it realistic that an educated person in the UK would never have read Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?), he sure delves right in, apparently consumed by this mystery. Weird.

So, if the book is supposed to be sharing the author's true, fact-based theories on the Brontës, why would it be written as a novel. And if the speculations are purely fiction (as I suspect), why did this novel have to be so boring? For being about murder and passion and jealousy, it sure was a snooze. Coutts reiterates much of what Brown describes, making the story drag. I could have appreciated the speculations if the story had been well-written. Keep Martha's perspective, keep her as Nicholls's lover and enabler, but get rid of Coutts, get rid of the deposition, and SHOW us the damn story. The baffling style that it's written in did not pull me into the story, but rather invited my skepticism. It just needed to be an entertaining story, and it really wasn't.

One idea that nagged at me was the frequently expressed idea that the Brontës's deaths were suspicious at all. They were a sickly sort, and this was the mid 1800's in rural England. People died all the time of weird shit...and the idea that Emily Brontë was pregnant when she died, and Charlotte wasn't, is a strange claim because somebody would have noticed this, even if the doctors of Haworth were (conveniently for the author) idiots...this only according to the fictional narratives, of course. Suffice it to say, I was not impressed with this book. Again, I'm no Brontë fanatic. I liked Wuthering Heights, and I read Charlotte Brontë's most famous work several years ago, but that's all. No, I found the book boring, and I rolled my eyes many times as I read it.