The Madwoman Upstairs
A light-hearted literary comedy
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
'A funny, smart read with a kick-ass heroine' Sun on Sunday. A witty, light-hearted comedy about love and fiction, and the all-important difference between the two.
Think you know Charlotte, Emily & Anne? Think again. Samantha Whipple is the last remaining descendent of the illustrious Brontë family, of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre fame. After losing her father, a brilliant author in his own right, it is up to Samantha to piece together the mysterious family inheritance lurking somewhere in her past - yet the only clues she has at her disposal are the Brontë's own novels. With the aid of her handsome but inscrutable Oxford tutor, Samantha must repurpose the tools of literature to unearth an untold family legacy, and in the process, finds herself face to face with what may be literature's greatest secret.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American Samantha Whipple's hopes for an uneventful university career at Oxford are soon dashed when she realizes that everyone already knows her family story: she's the last surviving twig of the Bront family tree. What's more, someone is frightening Samantha by surreptitiously planting her late father's copies of Bront novels in Samantha's dorm room. Samantha had thought these were destroyed in the fire that killed her father several years earlier, but they may be cryptic clues to the mysterious Bront estate Samantha stands to inherit. Samantha's maddeningly demanding (and handsome) tutor, James Orville, is no help he flat-out refuses to discuss the Bront s. Lowell's debut novel offers some intriguing speculation about Bront family dynamics, particularly with regard to the life and work of lesser-known sister Anne; the repeated discussions of authorial intent, however, will likely be glossed over by all but the most dedicated English majors. Even without its attraction for Bront -philes, however, this is an enjoyable academic romp that successfully combines romance and intrigue, one that benefits from never taking itself too seriously.
