Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story

If you ever wondered what little Adele is all about, this is a great read! Easy read and I read in almost one sitting.

As an editor of the letters of the late Jean Rhys, i felt the same sense of discovery and excitement on reading Emma Tennant's Adele as i did when i first read Wide Sargasso Sea. Again, a character no one had thought or known about had been rescued and brought to the fore. In the case of Sargasso Sea it was of course the first Mrs Rochester, in Tennant's book, the little french girl, Mr Rochester's daughter is the heroine of a novel that goes hand in hand with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.Adele moved me deeply;this is a story with which so many will identify. for adele wants one thing more than anything in the world, and that is the reconciliation of her mother and father. That Celine Varens, actress and trapeze dancer, Parisian to her fingertips, has abandoned her daughter cannot at first be accepted by the child; and in this beautifully written account of her life in France and in the grim confines of Thornfield Hall in Yorkshire, Adele brings us both grief, a sense of a rebellion and finally, happiness.A wonderful book.

"Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story" provides a unique perspective of "Jane Eyre" through the eyes of some of the minor characters in the novel (Adele, Rochester, Grace Poole and Mrs. Fairfax). In this book, we find out about Adele's life with her mother, and explore Rochester's "hidden secret" in greater detail. "Adele" is a wonderful companion to Jane Eyre, and has earned its place next to "Jane Eyre" on any bookshelf.

I was 14 when I first read "Jane Eyre," and even though (as time passed) certain things about Bronte's novel did bother me a little (esp after I had read Jean Rhy's "Wide Sargasso Sea" -- another firm favourite, and a really magnificent novel), "Jane Eyre" remained a treasured favourite. There was something about Jane, the quiet, courageous, morally strong and most unlikely of gothic heroines, that struck my fancy. So that it was with some apprehension that I first picked up Emma Tennant's "Adele." I hadn't really liked her sequel to "Pride and Prejudice" ("Pemberly"), and I was a little nervous with what she might have done with "Jane Eyre." What a joy then to discover that with "Adele," Tennant has combined elements that I really liked from both "Jane Eyre" and "Wide Sargasso Sea," added her own little twist to the story of Jane/Rochester/Adele and what took place at Thornfield, and came with this really superb novel. No mistake about it, Emma Tennant's "Adele" is a novel to be read and savoured whether or not you are a Bronte or English lit fan.Even though there are five narrative voices in "Adele" -- Adele's, Rochester's, Jane's Mrs. Fairfax's, and Grace Poole's -- we see things mostly through Adele's eyes. When we first her, she's a young child (of about 8) living in Paris, and reveling in the knowledge that she is the child of the celebrated performance artist, Celine Verans, also one of the most beautiful and most sort after of women. But Adele's world comes crashing down upon her when her mother suddenly decamps with a lover to Italy, leaving her daughter behind. With no one willing to take on the guardianship of a young child, Adele is shipped off to her father's estate (Thornfield) in England, and to live with a man that Adele is somewhat afraid of and distrusts.At Thornfield, however, Adele is no longer treated as the pampered and treasured little girl, but as a hindrance, and is both neglected and ignored. As such she soon stumbles onto the secret of Thornfield: her father's deranged and much abused wife, Antoinette/Bertha. She also learns that her father means to marry the haughty heiress, Blanche Ingram, even as she watches her father romancing her plain and (in her own words) banal governess, Jane Eyre. But for Adele, who yearns to be loved and accepted wholeheartedly, her father should marry no one but her mother. And so she plots to bring her parents together, never dreaming that her actions would set off a course of reactions both unexpected and explosive..."Adele" was a real joy to read. The authour successfully captures the voices of each of her narrators -- Adele, who is very young and alone, who craves security and love; the mercurial Rochester who is in turns angry, bitter and remorseful (esp of his treatment of Antoinette/Berta); and, of course Jane, the moral center of the entire novel, and who tries to bridge the gap between Adele and Rochester without much initial success. Each voice adds a dimension and complexity to

I loved Adele - Emma Tennant's unique combination of sensitive delicacy of touch and a piercing contemporary analytical eye makes this a fascinating study.