The Bronte Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR

by Jennifer Vandever

Book Overview

A novel about reconciling the mythology of romance with the reality of modern love. Young scholar Sara Frost's unsuccessful search for the lost love letters of Charlotte Bront? hasn't won her any... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307236919
• ISBN13: 9780307236913
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
• Length: 279 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Don't Think Charlotte Would Mind

I waited about a week after reading the novel to sort my thoughts and write this review. I hold Charlotte Bronte (and her sisters) in high regard. Thus when I received The Bronte Project as a gift and read the chick-lit-sounding cover flap, I shuddered and worried and set the book on a shelf (for a year). While (finally) reading, I was pleasantly surprised that Jennifer Vandever did a great job with her research of the Brontes, did a great job with her plot, and did a great job of telling the story. Vandever made Sara Frost out to be a sympathetic, wimpy, get-on-with-it-would-you-please kind of doormat at the beginning of the book who goes through a welcome character arc (I won't give it ALL away). She made Paul out to be the kind of idiotic moron you want to emasculate. She made the viper Claire Vigee out to be the shallow sort of feminist-wannabe that too many English departments hire these days in hopes of attracting more students (read: more tuition dollars). Plot twists that you saw coming a mile away twisted back on themselves (Claire's baby's "father", the accident toward the end of the book - again, I won't give it ALL away) to make you say "Aha! Nice twist!" I enjoyed the jokes. I enjoyed the allusions to literature. I loved the Bronte epigraphs from letters and works, which were well-chosen to fit the theme of the chapters and showed the thought Vandever put into this project. She cared what she was doing when she wrote this novel. And for that, I commend her. If you're looking for a history lesson on the Bronte family, this isn't it. Charlotte's story is abbreviated and woven in carefully. It doesn't bog down (forgive me for suggesting such a thing; Charlotte's story is actually incredible) the story of Sara Frost finding her way out of her tiresome present. If you're looking for a good feminine empowerment story, it's hidden in here. Funnily enough, it's not in the banner-waving Claire Vigee, but Vandever has laced it among the arc of Sara Frost. And so I definitely recommend The Bronte Project to anyone looking for a good afternoon's read. From Sandy Lender, "Some days, I just want the dragon to win."

A literary novel in disguise

I disagree with the casual, dismissive categorization of Jennifer Vandever's The Bronte Project as chick lit. Yes, it has a female protagonist and, yes, she experiences romantic travails. But. Those two elements are not exclusive to chick lit. I'd encourage those who only saw the novel's top layer to take a closer look. Because beneath Vandever's breezy, well-constructed prose and accessible story line lurks a literary novel with pop sensibilities. Vandever's subtle approach presents serious ideas without fanfare. She examines, for instance, the constant struggle between commercialism and quality. Film executives dismayed by the boring reality of Charlotte Bronte's life want to sex it up. University administrators happily divert funding from serious scholarship to an over-the-top media star and her fashionable study of Diana Spencer. Inconvenient facts can be ignored. Sex sells; substance does not. True to this ethos, characters in this world get attention only if they're outrageous. Among their number are a French libertine who insists that he is, literally, a poem; a pair of aesthetes who insist on living as if they are in the 19th century; and a student who takes the (lower case) name magenta blue and creates controversial art. The lesson: Average people are forgettable. Vandever also considers voyeurism. Is reading the love notes of a 19th-century novel any different than watching a sex tape? Is there anything we don't want to know, if we can? Says Diana scholar Claire to Bronte scholar Sara: "You think privacy is in the Constitution...It's not. The pursuit of happiness is. The pursuit of privacy is not. It's an artifact, a collective illusion, this valuation of non-disclosure. It's never existed. You people have an insatiable lust, which you cannot ever accept, hence the gnawing appetite. Of course I would watch Dodi and Diana having sex. Wouldn't you want to see Charlotte Bronte having sex, if such a tape existed?" Oh, yeah, and she takes exquisite (yet pragmatic) aim at the realities of life in academia and Hollywood. The true greatness of this novel is the skill with which Vandever incorporates serious topics in a glossy format. It might look superficially like beach reading -- and it can be that if it's all you want -- but there's much more going on if you only dig a little deeper. It's fun, it's substantive. Read it.

reads like a Dorothy Parker biography

Really good plot for a novel which borders on chick-lit but has much more depth to it. Sara Frost is a Bronte-expert (lots of interesting tidbits about the Bronte family in book too) whose fiance, Paul (the loser) leaves her to find himself in Paris for a year. In the meanwhile, Sara goes in search of lost Bronte letters and travels herself, in literary circles. I kept being reminded of Dorothy Parker's life of pen as well. This novel flows and makes the reader want more literature for the soul by the end. Super debut!

Pure Bliss

What a wonderful book, a perfect respite from flakey and shallow heroines. A perfect mix of literature crossed with chick lit. I wanted more!

fabulous satire

At a New York university, Sara Frost knows that the best she can hope for is teaching Lit 101 as she remains unpublished, still needs to write her doctorate, and is unable to find the proof of her topic, Charlotte Bronte's letters. Adding to her downtrodden feelings is the newest member of the faculty lively self-promoting, media guru and published author and recognized expert on Princess Diana, Claire Vigee. The newcomer's élan sends Sara's bored fiancé Paul to Paris seeking life (on a fellowship of course), but not before he splits from her. Stunned by the desertion as much as by her own comparisons to the I am the greatest Claire, the reticent Sara loses her grant and is further manipulated by the hurricane who has taken over the school by storm. Soon Claire meets a film producer, who wants to do a New Age retelling of Charlotte's life with much more of the zest than normally presented. Yet through Claire's manipulations Sara risks all heading to Los Angeles and Europe seeking to avoid the label of a modern day "silent Victorian". This fabulous satire lampoons academia, the book publishing industry, and Hollywood by having the Victorian romantic meet the modern day author. Readers will appreciate the comparisons between characters to include Charlotte as Sara is a serious scholar until driven away by the "worship of the pseudo-scholar Claire whose latest bets seller on Princess Di will leave readers in awe as it is not the substance that counts just the sales hyped by the PR. Harriet Klausner