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A review by cattytrona
Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor
4.0
this is the story of the brontës, told pretty straightforwardly in content, except that it’s often in funny little sections and switches perspective and form a lot — oh, and is sort of set in the modern day.
which worked for me! i found the americanisms jarring, and the updated book titles particularly unnecessary, but apart from that, i liked the modern resetting. and i would have liked it less if it was more literal, less experimental. but as it was, i felt it captured sort of how the brontës exist. they’re forever being brought into the modern world when evoked in discussions of feminism and femininity and relatability, and ultimately because they’re being read/talked about/written in the present. but they are historic figures, and cannot be totally here, and so this story still keeps them at arms length, sat in a nebulous past, by how they speak and what they wear.
which worked for me! i found the americanisms jarring, and the updated book titles particularly unnecessary, but apart from that, i liked the modern resetting. and i would have liked it less if it was more literal, less experimental. but as it was, i felt it captured sort of how the brontës exist. they’re forever being brought into the modern world when evoked in discussions of feminism and femininity and relatability, and ultimately because they’re being read/talked about/written in the present. but they are historic figures, and cannot be totally here, and so this story still keeps them at arms length, sat in a nebulous past, by how they speak and what they wear.
the form leads to vagueness about characters at times, holes in their lives and development, some poeticism instead of motivation, but again, i think there’s something admirable in that, in this instance, because they’re not characters, they were real, and i think the vagueness owns up to a failure to be able to know them fully now, a lack in the archive and emotional, friendly knowledge too.
a couple of criticisms, still:
a couple of criticisms, still:
- aforementioned americanisms although i am british and cantor’s american, so the extra friction they cause is probably unintentional.
- lack of real engagement with female connection outside of family members. wasn’t nell a lifelong friend, knew emily and anne, wrote charlotte letters constantly from when they met at school, was on the trip when anne died? wasn’t elizabeth gaskell an important literary connection for charlotte and key myth maker, shaping how we know the family today? i’m not a big brontë person, so maybe i’m off about this, but feels like rewriting history to refocus so much of charlotte’s later life on love, and to reduce nell to a gossip-receiver and perhaps rival, and give gaskell’s personal knowledge to anonymous men. but again, holes.
- given the brontës were responsible for some all-timer metaphors, there’s a lack of memorable language and image work in here, for me.
- found the very last moment of the book a bit perplexing? just felt like an odd theme to reemphasise at that point, although i appreciate it’s making the point that it’s death all the way down, all the way through.
as a final note, i thought the deaths were really well written and rendered in this — which is lucky because they truly keep coming