Truly, madly, deeply

     This book is quite mad, and yet it sparkles - and I don't mean with a sort of deranged glint in the eye! Dee mentioned recently that she hadn't got on with it at all,  and I can quite see why - I too found it hard to get the hang of and it took a good hundred pages before I really did get it, but then I was off and very keen to get back to it yesterday when far too many chores deprived me of precious reading time.

    The Brontes Went to Woolworths, by Rachel Ferguson, is the story of an eccentric family. The three Carne girls, their widowed mother and their governess, Miss Martin, live in 1920s London. Deirdre, the eldest daughter, is a journalist and would-be novelist, Katrine is beginning a career on the stage, while Sheil is still in the schoolroom, but their lives are peopled by all sorts of imaginary friends and characters around whom they create bizarre flights of fancy, pretence and running jokes.

     When reality overlaps with their elaborate fantasy and they actually encounter their unlikely 'pin-up', the very real Mr. Justice Toddington, and his wife who have been part of their imaginings for some time, the story takes an engaging turn as the made-up "saga" must now be lived out. "The main trouble lay in the fact that I came to Lady Toddington aware: primed with a thousand delicate, secret knowledges and intuitions, whereas to her I was ... merely so much cubic girl, so to speak". And "Toddy, from a negative, had developed into a print." But the Toddingtons, once they - like the reader - get the hang of the Carne girls, play along with true spirit and add much substance to the girls' lives. Whimsical and fey it may be, but there's nothing wrong with that per se , and there's a deeper, darker side to the book (and that's where the Brontes come in) which balances the froth and fancy.

     A.S. Byatt writes in her introduction that it affected her whole writing life, and that's because it's about the power of imagination, "curiosity about details of other lives, and about the invention of new worlds, new patterns." It's quick, sharp, more than a touch batty, but ultimately rather endearing. It makes me inclined to dream up a "Toddy" of my own!   

Comments

[rosie]

Can see what I'll be reading next when I've finished All Passion Spent (which I'm enjoying immensely).

[Nora]

Thank you for your comment. I've been having problems with bloglines and your feeds haven't been updating. I've read [and very much loved] this book also. :)

[Becca]

Dare I say that, prior to this post, the sole reasons for wanting to read this book is the charming title which includes the name Brontes ... and the lovely cover!

[Simon]

Been wanting to read this for ages, but somehow have never got around to actually buying it... this will further tip me in the right direction!

[Nan]

This was highly recommended to me years ago but I didn't finish. I just couldn't connect somehow. I was hoping your blog entry title was the movie, one of my favorites of all time. :<)