Neo-Victorian Voices: The Swan’s Nest, Laura McNeal (2024)

It’s no secret that I love a book based on real Victorian scandals (after all, I did write a novel about the affair between Branwell Bronte and Lydia Robinson!), so I was excited to read Laura McNeal’s 2024 The Swan’s Nest as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, reviewing works set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first.

The Swan’s Nest tells the story of the relationship between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, in the lead up to, and early days of, their marriage, set against a backdrop of an English social milieu grappling with the legacy of slavery and exploitation in Jamaica. 

The courtship depicted here is tender, rather than steamy, and much of the novel focuses on side characters (some fictional, some based on real figures). Lovers of historical romance may be disappointed, but McNeal’s prose is enjoyable, and the novel feels well-researched and realistic. 

Barrett’s anxiety over her controlling father’s reaction to her burgeoning relationship and the love of poetry she shares with Browning came across most strongly. The sections dealing with colonialism leaned a little too didactic for my taste and took us away from the central characters but the important topic being explored will engage readers who are learning about the Barretts’ unsavory “business” interests for the first time.

Overall, while The Swan’s Nest is one of the quieter novels I’ve reviewed as part of this series, I would recommend it to anyone with a love for Browning and/or Barrett’s poems, an interest in the history of the British West Indies, or a preference for biographical historical fiction.

Do you have recommendations for what book I should review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist!

Want regular updates from this blog? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Sara Collins (2019)

You may know me as the author of Bronte’s Mistress, but, when I’m not writing my own books, I’m reading other people’s. For five and a half years now, in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, I’ve been reviewing books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. 

So far in 2020, I’ve blogged about Sandra Dallas’s Westering Women (2020), Jess Kidd’s Things in Jars (2019), Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte (2009), Bella Ellis’s The Vanished Bride (2019), Dinitia Smith’s The Honeymoon (2016) and Sarah Shoemaker’s Mr Rochester (2017). This time, it’s the turn of Sara Collins’s stellar 2019 debut, The Confessions of Frannie Langton.

It’s 1826 and Frannie Langton is in the Old Bailey prison in London when Collins’s novel opens. She’s accused of murdering her employer Mr Benham and his wife, a crime she tells us she can’t have committed because she was in love with her mistress. Frannie was born into slavery in Jamaica, and the British press has dubbed her “the Mulatto Murderess.” She doubts the court will recognise her humanity in her upcoming trial, so she chooses to make her confession to us, the readers, instead.

But what exactly is Frannie confessing? Did she kill either or both of the Benhams? Was she a complicit in the dissections and vivisections of slaves back on the plantation? Should we see her as a victim of sexual abuse, a willing party to incest, or both? Or is her confession a cri de coeur about her romantic feelings for a woman, a union this society condemns as equally unnatural?

While the plot unfolds slowly (after all, we know from the beginning that murder will be our destination), Frannie’s voice is distinctive and interesting. This feels in keeping with the unusual circumstances of her life, and, while I’ve read a few reviews from readers who found the frequency of similes excessive, I enjoyed how Frannie’s images were always rooted in her frame of reference.

Emotionally, there are few moments of joy. This is a novel about righteous and unrelenting anger, and the reading experience can be exhausting. There’s no respite for Frannie, but she never acts the part of docile and pitiable victim. A line of advice the character is given early in the book really stood out to me: “[There are] only two types of white people in this world, chile, the ones doing shit to you and the ones wanting you to tell them ’bout the shit them other ones did.” Collins asks (especially White) readers to confront their own ideas of what a narrative about a former slave should be.

While Frannie is an utterly original creation, at times she reminded me of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Like Jane, she’s overlooked and unfairly written off by those around her, and frequently thrust into the role of observer, although her perceptions are sharp and her words can be fierce. At the same time, she is also, of course, akin to Jane’s predecessor Bertha Mason, another famous Jamaican. As in postcolonial interpretations of Bertha, Frannie can be seen as an avenging angel, a personification of the White British man’s fears of his abuses abroad, the source of his wealth, coming back to haunt him.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Confessions of Frannie Langton and urge fellow Victorianists to add it to their reading lists. Do you have a tip for me about a great book for my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

If you're interested in receiving book recommendations from me straight to your inbox, sign up for my monthly newsletter below. And don’t forget that my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, is available for purchase now—in hardcover, audiobook, or e-book.

Get updates on my novel - Bronte's Mistress

* indicates required

Email Address * 

Neo-Victorian Voices: Mr Rochester, Sarah Shoemaker (2017)

When it comes to Jane Austen vs. the Brontes, Austen definitely has a winning number of twenty-first century novels that take her life and works as their inspiration. However, one of the best parts about releasing my own Bronte-inspired novel, Bronte’s Mistress, this summer has been connecting with other writers who have taken the Brontes, not Austen, as their subject.

I recently reviewed Bella Ellis’s The Vanished Bride and Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte. This week it’s the turn of Sarah Shoemaker’s 2017 novel, Mr Rochester.

Among modern Bronte readers, Edward Rochester, the hero of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, has a mixed reputation. To some, he’s a swoon-worthy male lead. To others, he’s deeply problematic, due to his time in the colonies, not to mention his mentally ill wife in the attic. Most, I think, find Rochester flawed, but not irredeemable, although this interpretation lends credence to the idea that all a troubled man needs is the love of a good woman to save him.

Sarah Shoemaker makes no apologies for being a devoted Rochester fan and the focus of her novel is on fleshing out his life prior to his meeting with Jane Eyre. The book is made up of three parts, uneven in length—1. Edward’s childhood. 2. His time in Jamaica (including his marriage to Bertha Mason), and 3. The story we’re familiar with from Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel.

Shoemaker’s prose is beautiful and demonstrates her familiarity with nineteenth-century fiction and Charlotte Bronte’s style in particular. This is the sort of historical novel that could at times pass for a novel written in the period it’s set in. I found this especially true in the early chapters, which chart Rochester’s education and apprenticeship as the neglected second son. Shoemaker paints a believable picture of how a boy in Edward’s position might have been raised, and his experiences provide an interesting, gendered counterpart to the childhood we know Jane Eyre will later live through.

In Jamaica, a young Rochester never fully confronts the horrors of slavery, expressing some discomfort at the idea, and queasiness at the brutal punishments delivered on behalf of him and other White landowners, without having a profound moment self revelation. While this response is believable, I was longing for a little more reflection, as Rochester matures into the man whom Jane can fall in love with.

The section covering the same material as Jane Eyre is close to the source material. While Shoemaker does enhance the plot, adding a few more complications, purists will be pleased to see the reverence with which she handles Bronte’s work. The novel made me went to read Jane Eyre again, or even have the books open side by side to double check what was twenty-first century invention.

In her dedication, Shoemaker mentions her ‘fascination’ with Rochester, and her passion for the character and for Bronte’s book really comes through in the text. But I couldn’t help but wonder if part of a Gothic hero’s fascinating charm is in his unknowabilty. Now that we have access to Rochester’s thoughts, can he be as fascinating as he was before? And at those times when Jane Eyre is inscrutable to him? Well, thanks to Charlotte, we know exactly how she feels.

Do you have recommendations of books I should read next, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. 

And have you ordered your copy of Bronte’s Mistress yet? Oprah Magazine named my book one of this Fall’s top reads, while Christian Science Monitor calls it ‘a stirring defence of the maligned Mrs Robinson.’

Get updates on my novel - Bronte's Mistress

* indicates required

Email Address *