The Brontë Project By Jennifer Vandever
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Reading too much fiction can seriously damage your love life. Like her heroine, Charlotte Brontë, Sara Frost is 28 when she first experiences a broken heart. Her crisis begins when fiancé, Paul, dumps her to take up a fellowship in Paris. Sara is left in a bruised heap.
Not only must she find the rent for her Manhattan apartment - she's an academic on a tiny salary - but if she doesn't trace a lost Charlotte Brontë letter she'll lose her funding. On the plus side, two new suitors enter her life: a French poet called Denis and a west-coast movie producer. The poet wants to sleep with her and the producer wants her to develop a script about the Haworth sisters, to be called "The Brontë Project".
In this witty send-up of academia and Hollywood, debut novelist Jennifer Vandever attempts to reconcile the mythology of windswept romance with 21st-century dating. Her most entertaining character is Claire Vigee, a Princess Diana scholar, who thrills her student audiences with her daring appropriation of popular culture and gender politics.
Unlike Charlotte, who eventually settles for the nearest curate (and promptly dies), Sara decides to hang on for Mr Right. What Vandever is saying about modern versus moor-land love isn't always entirely clear.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments