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A review by beccakatie
Dark Quartet: The Story Of The Brontes by Lynne Reid Banks
4.0
Going into this book knowing that it was a fictionalised biography definitely helped me appreciate it more. From the little I know of the Brontës’ lives, it seemed like an accurate retelling, which was emotive and well driven. The struggles and sufferings of characters ate at the reader, and you felt the continuous joys of suffering and misery just as they did.
I felt it was the perfect balance between story-telling and factual biography, with a good focus on all of the siblings, their relationships feeling real and complex. The sisters’ relationship with Bramwell, in particular, clearly demonstrated the fraught feelings at each one of his failures and fits, and I felt the way the downfall of an idealised man was written, one who was supposed to be the most intelligent, the most successful, due to nothing more than his gender, was captivating. The shifting dynamic in the relationships that this caused, his life damaged irreparably while his sisters’ begin to achieve success, definitely helped carry the later chapters of the book.
I felt it was the perfect balance between story-telling and factual biography, with a good focus on all of the siblings, their relationships feeling real and complex. The sisters’ relationship with Bramwell, in particular, clearly demonstrated the fraught feelings at each one of his failures and fits, and I felt the way the downfall of an idealised man was written, one who was supposed to be the most intelligent, the most successful, due to nothing more than his gender, was captivating. The shifting dynamic in the relationships that this caused, his life damaged irreparably while his sisters’ begin to achieve success, definitely helped carry the later chapters of the book.