Well. This is obviously an incredibly impressive achievement, and for anyone with enough interest in the Brontes to *want* to read 1000 pages about them, it's totally worth the time and effort. I do think, though, that the author went just a bit too deep into certain topics (the politics and work issues of the father, the immense detail on the juvenilia) and so it could have been focused just a bit more...but even so, it's just chock-full of stories and imagery and exploration, and fleshes out these women so well. A nice way to close out my reading year :)