Brief Candle

This YA novel by Kate Pennington is a re-imagining of part of Emily Bronte's life. She comes across a wild boy, Heslington, and quickly gets tangled up in his troubles. At the same time, his freedom and his need for freedom is reflected in Emily's life, as she begins to realise what is in store for her as an adult; servitude and duty.

There's no information given about the author; there's no real sense of the narrator in this story, which makes it even more mysterious, which adds to its dark mood. The atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors and the teenaged girl running wild there is developed perfectly. All the Brontes, from sweet Anne to crazy Branwell (and why he, the loser of the family, survived so long when the other girls died off is a sad mystery) are brilliantly and accurately portrayed. The language is deliberately archaic without being stilted, and at the same time she's done what the Brontes should have done, which is to avoid all "Yorkshire-isms" which are not only incomprehensible but patronising.

This is actually a clever "coming-of-age" novel, clever because most of those kinds of books are so obvious. This is subtler; she's not discovering her sexuality or her femininity or whatever, she's discovering what being an adult is really all about - deceit, bearing burdens unwillingly, choosing what is thought right over what is right. Emily stays true to herself even when it seems ridiculous - even to the reader - and whether she is right or wrong, she's admirable in being true to what she believes. She comes across as the best person in the story because of this, which is good because she's the hero of it.

This is a great book for fans of Wuthering Heights, but even for people like me who can't bear Heathcliff or Catherine, it's great, because it's about the passion of the person who wrote that book,and about how some people just don't fit into this world.