Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at a book that has caught my eye.
This week we are looking at Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye. With Jane Eyre being one of my favourite books, I was hooked by the cover of this book and wanted to take a closer look.
Lyndsay Faye is the author of critically acclaimed Dust and Shadow and the Timothy Wilde trilogy: the Edgar Award-nominated The Gods of Gotham, Seven For A Secret and The Fatal Flame. She is featured in Best American Mystery Stories 2010.
The Blurb
Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked – but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors. A fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate’s true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household’s strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him – body, soul and secrets – and what if he discovers her murderous past?
In the Beginning...
Chapter One
"I wouldn't have her heart for anything. Say yours prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney, and fetch you away."
Of all my many murders, committed for love and for better reasons, the first was the most important.
Already this project proves more difficult than I had ever imagined. Autobiographies depend upon truth; but I have been lying for such a very long, lonesome time.
"Jane, will you be my friend again?" Edwin Barbary had asked.
My cousin's lips were gnawed red, his skin gleaming with exertion and desire. When his fleshy mouth next moved, the merest croak emerged. He breathed precisely five more times, the fat folds of his belly shuddering against his torn waistcoat, and then he stilled like a depleted clockwork toy.
More of my homicides anon - the astute among you will desire to know why a dyed-in-the-wool villainess takes up pen and foolscap in the first place. I have been reading over and over again the most riveting of book titles Jane Eyre, and the work inspires me to imitative acts. My new printing features a daring introduction by the author railing against the first edition's critics. I relate to this story almost as I would to a friend or a love - at times I want to breathe its entire alphabet into my lungs, and at others I should prefer to throw it across the room. Whoever heard of disembodied voices calling to governesses, of all people, as this Jane's do?
Hereby do I avow that I, Jane Steele, in all my days working as a governess, never once heard ethereal cries carried to me upon the brawny shoulders of the north wind; and had I done, I should have kept silent for fear of being labelled eccentric...
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This book is a must read for me as it promises so much. What do you think? What genre would you place this book in?
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