the Madwoman Upstairs

Catherine Lowell has written quite an entertaining plot with a slow reveal that takes the reader on a journey through the books of the Bronte sisters.  Sometimes it feels like Lowell might have started out to write a history of the Bronte family and then decided to write fiction instead of nonfiction.

We start the story off following Samantha Whipple off to The Old College at Oxford University. Samantha is the last surviving relative of the Bronte family.  Her father, who she still morning the death of, was a brilliant author himself and spent Samantha's youth home schooling her, analyzing the literature of the family writers.  There are among literary fanatics and scholarly circles rumors that there is a treasure trove of memorabilia, a hidden fortune of diaries, letters and original drafts of the novels that have been left to Samantha.  She enters Oxford also wondering about the legacy her father has left her. He had mentioned a book called the The Warnings of Experience, but she does not know it is real or was just his imagination.   Is there any real inheritance or are there just the copies of Jane Eyre, Wurthing Heights and The Tenet of Wildfell Hall.

Ensconced in the Tower, Samantha is studying with Professor James Orville who helps her unpack and understand the meaning of the novels.  On her quest to find her inheritance and learn more about her father, she encounters many obstacles along the way.  The reader along with Samantha interprets the meaning behind the words in Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.  We try to imagine how the sisters got along with each other and their brother, Bramwell.  What were their lives like.  Samantha has lead a lonely childhood and lived in a fantasy world with the Bronte sisters as her friends.

This is a fun well constructed story that slowly reveals the relationships of the characters and leads us and Samantha to the truth.  Lowell has so many facts about the Bronte sisters and quotes from their books that the reader would be curious to read more about the Brontes after finishing this novel.