Robert Edric

You can't be familiar with the brooding moorlands near Howarth and not feel as though you understand something of the Bronte family and their lives. Most of us think we know something about them: the mother and sisters who died, the sisters who remained hewing their path towards immortality in slow, painful steps. And then there's the brother, Bramwell, the black sheep, fighting his failures, his addictions, his inability to find a way to make something of his life. He is the subject, in fact the 'author' of this book. He paints a sorry picture of his stumbling path, in the final year of his young life, towards illness, addiction and death. I found the picture he painted of himself - hopelessly depressed, fault-finding, increasingly estranged from his family, increasingly self-deluded a fascinating one. In this book, Bramwell does not dig deep in his moments of introspection, but then you wouldn't expect him to. He doesn't favour us with pen portraits of his father, his sisters. Just tantalising glimpses of what they're like. But nobody is more self-centred, less self-aware than Bramwell Bronte. Edric has carefully constructed this book in a series of vignettes that barely constitute a narrative, but which leave us feeling bewildered sympathy for an intelligent young man who has utterly lost his way. A beautifully imagined reconstruction of a life ill-lived.… (more)