Fabulous Fiction Firsts #636 & #637

REVIEW WRITTEN WORD


Fabulous Fiction Firsts #636

At long last. After 170 years, readers of Charlotte Brontë's beloved Jane Eyre (1847) and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which tells the story of the mysterious madwoman in the attic, will finally hear from Mr. Rochester himself. Not only will we get a first-person perspective from "the brooding romantic antihero" created by Charlotte Brontë, but debut novelist Sarah Shoemaker has also created a credible back story and adds unexpected twists to the tale.

The narrative opens on Edward Fairfax Rochester's eighth birthday when his largely absent and autocratic father informed him, through a missive delivered by the butler, that the young boy was being sent away from Thornfield Hall to be educated. At 13, he was sent to the mill office to learn to run the family businesses, being made clear by his father that Thornfield Hall was to go to his elder brother, Rowland. Edward's future lay instead, in the plantation and shipping trade in faraway Jamaica.

There the young and lonely Edward fell under the spell of the beautiful and mercurial heiress Antoinetta Bertha Mason and proposed marriage, unwittingly falling into an engineered trap and devastating betrayal. When his father died, Edward must return to England with his increasingly unstable wife to take over as master of Thornfield. And it was there, on a twilight ride, that he met the stubborn, plain, young governess, Jane.

This northern Michigan author (and former librarian) explains how she comes to write Mr. Rochester on her website. On Tuesday, May 16, at 7 pm, she will be at Nicola's Books. In June she will participate on the First Author, First Book Panel at the American Library Association conference in Chicago.

Readers eager to explore more on the fictional lives of our literary leading men might want to try Mr. Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange and H.: The story of Heathcliff's journey back to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire-Sargeant.


Fabulous Fiction Firsts #637

Battle Creek (MI) poet Jay Baron Nicorvo's first novel The Standard Grand * is "an appropriately complex snapshot of America’s relationship with the men and women who defend it." (Publishers Weekly)

Diagnosed with PTSD and dependent on a smorgasbord of pharmaceutics, Army trucker (Ante)Bellum Smith went AWOL, unable to face a third deployment. Sleeping rough in Central Park, she met Milt Wright, a widowed Vietnam vet, who ran The Standard, a tumbledown Borscht Belt resort that has been converted into a halfway house for homeless vets, literally "their last potshot at a decent life".

More than a recruit (and the lone female), Milt, dying from cancer, was hoping Bellum would take over running the resort. But they were not the only ones with plans: IRJ Inc., a Houston-based multinational corporation intent on transforming the property into a golf course, sent in Evangelina Canek who hoped by cheaply acquiring the property and turning a quick profit would save her job. The fact that The Standard sat on a massive shale formation would undoubtedly endear her to her boss. Not leaving anything to chance, IRJ also sent in Ray Tyro (Reverend, Early Bird) a mercenary to infiltrate the group.

"Whip-smart dialogue and keen emotional insight bring a ragtag, damaged, but lovable cast of characters to life. Ultimately, it is Nicorvo’s depiction of the deep psychological scars soldiers bring home that will keep this exceptional first novel in the hearts and minds of readers. Alongside Billy Lynn’s Long, Halftime Walk (2012) and Yellow Birds (2012), The Standard Grand is an important and deeply human contribution to the national conversation." (Booklist)

* = starred review

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