Rating: 
Summary: The mystery of "Emma Pilgrim."
Review: The first two chapters of this novel are the work of Charlotte Brontë (JANE EYRE). When Brontë died in 1855, she left behind a 20-page manuscript written after VILLETTE and before her marriage. It was her last piece of fiction (p. 436). In EMMA BROWN, Clare Boylan has used Brontë's fragment of a story as the starting point of her own Victorian novel, which tells the mysterious story of a young girl (Matilda Fitzgibbon), abandoned at a boarding school (Fuschia Lodge), and later entrusted to Boylan's narrator (Isabel Chalfont), before she returns to London's dirty, Dickensian streets (where she discovers her real name, Emma Brown) in search for her true identity and the mother who sold her to a gentleman for a guinea (p. 292). Matilda proves to be "no ordinary child." She is melodramatic and smart beyond her years, and when questioned about her past, says only, " I was sold like a farmyard creature. No one wants me. Only God may help me now" (p. 52). At the heart of Boylan's mystery, there is a startling secret about Victorian society.It doesn't matter whether this is the novel Brontë ever actually intended to write. Boylan's novel will nevertheless appeal to readers (like me) who enjoy reading Victorian literature. (And, oh, how I love reading Victorian novels!) With compelling parallels to Dicken's character sketches and Michel Faber's more recent, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE (2002), EMMA BROWN is really a novel about the underside of nineteenth-century England: homelessness and child prostitution in Victorian London. The result is a satisfying novel with all the pathos of Brontë, Dickens, or Hardy. Emma is a strange girl, with the ability not only to steal wallets, but to steal hearts as well (p. 215). G. Merritt
Rating: 
Summary: Finishing what Charlotte Brontë started
Review: This is a new Victorian novel, starting with 2 chapters that were written by Charlotte Brontë. Clare Boylan did a good job, finishing what Brontë started. It must be difficult to finish something someone else started, let alone that person being the famous writer C. Brontë is !!!
It's not an upbeat novel, but you do not expect it to be - Charlotte Brontë it not know for her light, humerous writing. It tells the story about a little girl (who seems to be rich, with her expensive clothes and good looking and well-dressed father) who's dropped of by her father in a little private school. When the tution is not paid the headmistress finds out her "father" gave a false address and name. A gentlemen they know and a widow who lives in the little town try to find out who this girl really is, where she came from and why she was left in their town. The story takes you to the parts of London where the very poor live, the thieves, the pimps, the women and children they force to prostitute...
It's a good story, well written, the characters have depth. If you like Victorian novels, you'll like this one !
Rating: 
Summary: Anachronism
Review: Would Charlotte Bronte have used words and phrases like "neurotic", "prime site", "mindless entertainment", and "middle class", as Clare Boylan does in finishing a Bronte manuscript? Not in any Victorian novel I have read! But worse than the frequent anachronisms is the soppy plot. Absolute tommyrot. The book is a waste of time, but its ersatz Bronte-esque romantic aura will make it a favorite of those who like that sort of thing.
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