The Bronte Project - Softcover

Vandever, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307236927 ISBN 13: 9780307236920

Verlag: Three Rivers Pr, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

“A sweet read even a Wuthering Heights fan can love.” —Entertainment Weekly

Young scholar Sara Frost’s unsuccessful search for the lost love letters of Charlotte Brontë hasn’t won her any favors at her university, particularly now that the glamorous and self-promoting Princess Diana expert, Claire Vigee, has introduced her media-savvy exploits to the staid halls of academia. But it’s not until Sara’s fiancé suddenly leaves her that she begins to question her life’s vocation.

Sara’s jolt brings her to an unusual new world, one populated by a cheerfully amoral Frenchman, a pair of New York eccentrics who pretend to live in the nineteenth century, a lapsed methadone addict and screenwriter, and a Hollywood producer who mistakenly assumes that the short, sad life of Charlotte Brontë has the makings of the next “feel good” movie blockbuster.

The Brontë Project is an irreverent and comic look at love, loss, literature, and pop culture, and a guide to reconciling the mythology of romance with the reality of modern love.

A Redbook Magazine Book Club Pick

Look for the reader’s group guide at the back of this book.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer Vandever is a graduate of Columbia University’s film program and the cowriter of the filmJust One Time. The Brontë Project is her first novel. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Visit her at jennifervandever.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Letters

It is painful to be dependent on the small stimulus letters give.—Charlotte Bronte, to Ellen Nussey, 1850

Fate affords some lovers only one opportunity to meet. Others it allows endless opportunities, so that their coupling seems more like the work of fate's fair-haired cousin, serendipity. Whatever the circumstances, any number of preconditions must gather around this fortuitous event. In the case of Sara and Paul it was the combination of a graduate seminar on the modern British novel, a boring holiday party, Anglophilia in general, and Paul's vague resemblance to a young Laurence Olivier in particular. They had so capitalized on their good fortune that six years after the fact they stood side by side, surveying the crowd, both eyeing the door and drinking a cheap merlot from plastic cups.

Even in the most generous accounting, fate has a lot to answer for. Romeo and Juliet met on a Sunday and were dead by Thursday. This was a fact Sara had picked up at an academic seminar, "Shakespeare's Love and Time: Counting Our Days"--something like that--wedged between lectures on Ophelia's eating disorders and Macbeth's compulsive gambling. Someone had actually taken it upon himself to count the days in that play, a ludicrous venture Sara had thought at the time. But it was an instructive fact, one that stayed with her. This was the true lesson of Romeo and Juliet: The course of destiny was hard and swift. That stranger you met on Sunday could be the corpse of your true love draped artfully over your own cadaver on Thursday. You just never knew.

Sara remembered this fact as she watched Paul chatting joylessly with the Vice Dean, the cheap merlot coating the back of her throat like syrup. The wine was actually very expensive, she thought. Not that the wine was any good, but it's a particular brand of wine that a particular brand of people will stand around in bright rooms drinking out of plastic cups, people who must believe this activity will bring them some advantage. In terms of lost time, dignity, and energy, the wine actually came at a very steep price. Sara had time to think of this as she set down her cup and approached the cheese platter, realizing the same theory applied to cheese.

"The wine's actually pretty expensive, if you think about it," Sara whispered to Paul. They were in need of the quiet intimacy of a shared joke.

"Sorry, what?" Paul asked, distracted.

"The wine. It's expensive. If you factor in the lost time and . . . dignity . . ." Sara said, faltering. It was less amusing out loud and Paul gave her the indulgent smile of a joke unrealized.

"Then let's go," Paul said.

"Not yet."

It happened every year in late August, the old faculty welcoming the new. It seemed a strange custom to celebrate newness by offering up the same old: bad wine, bad cheese, new teachers, welcome. Paul was ready to leave and find a proper drink elsewhere. He'd learned there wasn't much advantage to be found here while Sara still hadn't, and it was creating a rift. Paul didn't need these events like Sara did. He'd already published--at twenty-seven, no less--and wrote about sexy topics like language and power that attracted grants and the attention of Vice Deans.

Sara was not so lucky in her research, which concerned letters and, more specifically, lost letters. She was looking for Bronte letters. The Brontes were famously avid correspondents and scrupulous destroyers of their own work. Such was the Victorian horror of private revelation that few of these personal missives survived. The bulk of her research consisted of dead-end correspondences with cranky old ladies in Belgium and England who may or may not have lost Bronte letters languishing in their attics. They had gotten to be an occupational hazard, these lonely widows who would tease out Sara's interest in their forgotten archives. They would tell her of their cat's indigestion, their lost pension checks, visits to the doctor, cataloging in minute detail their various physical complaints. They would describe the boorishness of neighbors, the ingratitude of children, the sad, failing light on their kitchen's windowsill before getting down to Sara's real purpose in writing them. Invariably the investigations ended in disappointment.

Sara would probably never find an authentic letter, and she had to admit during quieter moments that perhaps this search was simply an attempt to delay the inevitable: writing her thesis. There was a long list of missing Bronte letters and writings, but by now most people assumed they'd been destroyed, and who really cared? Not Sara's thesis adviser.

"D'you think there might've been some sexual abuse in there?" her adviser once asked hopefully.

"Good God, no," Sara replied.

"Oh, well, can't hurt to look, can it?" the adviser suggested merrily.

With most English Ph.D. candidates scrambling for the last crumbs of employment, Sara knew she was poorly situated. For the time being, the department would plug her into Lit. 101 courses, sopping up the excess of unlettered freshmen. Her research grant, which provided the bulk of her living expenses, was due for renewal soon and she was becoming keenly aware that unless she did something vaguely fashionable, something vaguely sexy as Paul had, her days were numbered.

"Let's go," Paul whispered again.

"We can't."

"Why not?"

"We're celebrating newness," Sara reminded.

"Oh, right," Paul sighed.

Something always compelled her to believe that five more minutes would rectify a brief academic career distinguished mostly by its silence. Even this pathetic celebration of newness gave her hope. She knew Paul was mostly there for her benefit this year and he was eager to leave at the first opportunity. Then there was a collective rustling in the room. Sara looked up to see that Claire Vigee, the bestselling Princess Diana scholar and the faculty's most dazzling new addition, had arrived.

"Excuse me, everyone," Claire began.

The crowd turned to face Claire, who was dressed like a cross between Rita Hayworth and a seventeenth-century courtesan and was flanked by two very buff black men dressed entirely in leather. This was new.

"These are Derek and Lester, my bodyguards," Claire announced in a lilting accent that sounded to Sara like an indefinable mix of French, British, and pretentiousness. "There have been some death threats. Anyway, they're passing out directions to the launch party tonight for my new book, which you probably all know about. I'm afraid I have to be off, but I just want you all to know how much I look forward to teaching here this year and learning from all of you and all that. Thanks."

Something about the way Claire had thanked them provoked the crowd to give her a round of applause, as though they had just given her an award. The book party was being sponsored by the journal Claire edited, Labia, and Sara overheard Ed Grimes, the drunken medievalist, snicker triumphantly about never turning down an invitation from "labia" as bodyguard Derek thrust an invitation into her hands. General merriment erupted as the crowd that had lowered its sights to Free Bad Wine learned that it was now being treated to an Open Bar. Sara was about to toss her invitation away when she caught Paul's eye and realized that, of course, they were going.

Sara already knew Claire and knew...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Three Rivers Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307236927
• ISBN 13: 9780307236920
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 294
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar