Our friends at the Bronte Blog have weighed in on Laura Joh Rowland's imaginative new novel Bedlam: The Further Adventures of Charlotte Bronte: "We were pleased to hear there would be a second installment of Charlotte Brontë's secret adventures, as we had really liked the first. Laura Joh Rowland had provided such a sturdy springboard into that fantasy world where Charlotte Brontë turns into a Victorian superheroine that we were oh so willing to take that leap again.
And a few lines into Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë confirmed that the spring board was still good enough. Laura Joh Rowland's apt re-creation of Charlotte Brontë's style is still as accomplished and mesmerising as the first time around, even with the all-American turns of phrase that graze the text from time to time. She moves with ease in Victorian times: conventions, events, behaviour and all sorts of other important background information are seemingly effortlessly whipped up.
Purists may or may not agree with this action-figure Charlotte but what's undeniably true is that when circumstances allow it, Charlotte is as much her real self as possible and even her imaginary projection is intriguing in being quite coherent with her real self and what we know of her. And then there's the helpful disclaimer at the end where real events and real people are differentiated from imaginary events.
And even then there's evidence of Laura Joh Rowland having fun and joking with her readers. The "WANTED" poster with Charlotte's portrait by Richmond made us chuckle and appreciate the effort made by Rowland in order to be - usually at the same time - entertaining and accurate. The impossible situations, the action movie scenes, particularly the last scene at the Great Exhibition, follow the same philosophy, we think. They are not to be taken extremely seriously, looked at with the magnifying glass of reality, but just taken in the reader's stride. We all know Charlotte Brontë wasn't a superheroine, that her health wouldn't have stood 10% of what happens in the book, but for less that 400 pages, may we just forget about it and believe that Charlotte Brontë really did have these secret adventures?"
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Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Laura Joh Rowland's new Charlotte Bronte mystery, Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte, is already drawing excellent review attention:
"Jane Eyre’s alter ego returns when Charlotte Brontë again finds herself embroiled in a treacherous escapade that transports her from the squalid slums of Whitechapel to Queen Victoria’s regal summer estate. While visiting her publisher in London, Charlotte hopes to find the inspiration for her next novel during a visit to the notorious Bedlam Psychiatric Hospital. Instead, she recognizes one of the inmates as John Slade, her secret-agent lover whom she believed was on a mission to Russia—or dead. When Charlotte’s efforts to free Slade put her directly in the center of an international plot to stop a terrorist from launching a lethal biological weapon, the intrepid author herself is accused of heinous murders and becomes the subject of a police manhunt. Rowland’s literary heroine demonstrates all the cunning, guile, and daredevil skills of a modern-day Bond girl while retaining the essence of Victorian morality. Sharply relevant, Rowland’s inventive action-thriller delivers enough intrigue and romance to satisfy a wide array of readers."� Booklist
"Love draws the Victorian novelist into another breathtaking adventure. The surprising success of Jane Eyre has thrust Charlotte Bronte into the glare of the public spotlight, but this is a mixed blessing. Her sisters Anne and Emily have recently died after living through the commercial failures of their fiction, and Charlotte has left behind the love of her life, British spy John Slade, whom she met during an implausible escapade in Moscow. Renowned author and social lion William Makepeace Thackeray, who's taken Charlotte under his wing, shepherds her meeting with London's literati. Then an opportunity to visit the infamous mental institution Bedlam takes a dark turn. One inmate bears an unsettling resemblance to Anne; another, Charlotte is sure, is her beloved John, though asylum officials identify him as Polish refugee Josef Typinski. When Typinski escapes from Bedlam in the confusion following a murder of which he now stands accused, Charlotte knows what she must do. Chapters from John Slade's prior adventure alternate with dispatches from Charlotte's colorful investigation, which includes meeting the Queen and Prince Albert, a brief stay in prison and an incognito encounter with fans of her new novel, Shirley. The audacity of building a mystery caper around this unlikely heroine is part of the novel's considerable charm. Elegant stylist Rowland's prose remains as pitch-perfect as in Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte (2008), in what should be another long-running series from the author of the Sano Ichiro mysteries." - Kirkus Reviews
"Set in 1851, three years after the events in The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë, Rowland's fast-paced second Charlotte Brontë adventure continues to transform the shy author of Jane Eyre into an action heroine. Still pining for John Slade, the rugged spy from the first book whose marriage proposal she refused, Charlotte is stunned to come across John under restraints in Bedlam, the notorious London hospital for the insane. The last she knew John was in Russia on a secret mission. When Charlotte learns the police suspect that John is the Whitechapel Ripper, who's killed and mutilated three prostitutes, she sets out to prove him innocent, despite John's spymaster telling her that he betrayed Br
Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Don't miss this special evening of readings by top novelists Laura Joh Rowland, Peter Quinn, and R.J. Ellory at The Center for Fiction, 17 East 47th Street, in New York, at 6:30pm.