books that make you go hmmm...

Books that make you go hmmm....is a feature where I post about a novel I stumbled across that I'm not quite sure about - novels that can either be really great or really crappy.

If this one book proves to be as tantalizing as the synopsis makes it sound, we are in for a good ride!  

What think you?


Release Date:  February 22, 2010

SYNOPSISAn astonishing novel that removes Emily Dickinson’s own mysterious mask and reveals the passions and heartbreak of America’s greatest poet. What if the old maid of Amherst wasn’t an old maid at all? Her older brother, Austin, spoke of Emily as his “wild sister.” Jerome Charyn, continuing his exploration of American history through fiction, has written a startling novel about Emily Dickinson in her own voice, with all its characteristic modulations that he learned from her letters and poems. The poet dons a hundred veils, alternately playing wounded lover, penitent, and female devil. We meet the significant characters of her life, including her tempestuous sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert; her brooding father, Edward; and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who may have inspired some of her greatest letters and poems. Charyn has also invented characters, including an impoverished fellow student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, who will betray her; and a handyman named Tom, who will obsess Emily throughout her life. Charyn has written an extraordinary adventure that will disturb and delight.




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11 comments:

  1. Can you imagine? Sounds like a completely different image of her!

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  2. I agree- this sounds like it could be either a really great book or just fall flat. Are you going to give it a try?

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  3. Indulge me for a minute here: someday I will write The Great American Novel and be lauded through the centuries. Nobody better write a novel about me. Biographies are O.K., but I don't want people who never knew me writing about me. Here that internets? Nobody.

    Just sayin'.

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  4. This one is so definitely a "hmmmm"! I feel like it could venture way way too far into the realm of fiction to be close to reality, if you know what I mean! It could be an interesting experiment in a good or a bad way.

    I'm definitely with J.T. Oldfield though, I would not want anyone fictionalizing my life ever.

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  5. The handyman part makes me a little wary.

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  6. Can you imagine being so intriguing that people make up fiction about you 100 years later? The synopsis sounds interesting...I may need to get this one and see where it takes me.

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  7. i would love to read that one. I have always thought of the figure of Emily to be very elusive and mysterious and I love her poems so it would be fun to read a book based on her character.

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  8. I am going to have to give this one a thumbs down. It sounds kind of all over the place, and not in a good way.

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  9. I am going to have to give this one a thumbs down. It sounds kind of all over the place, and not in a good way.

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