Articles liés à Jane Steele
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ONE
“...I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your 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 book titled 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 a friend or a lover—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 labeled eccentric.
Faulting the work for its wild fancies seems petty, however, for there are marvellous moments within. I might myself once have written:
Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?
I left such reflections behind me in childhood, at the bottom of the small ravine where my first cousin drew his final gurgling breaths. Yet I find myself pitying the strange, kindly Jane in the novel whose biography is so weirdly similar; she, too, was as welcome in her aunt’s household as are churchmice in the Communion larder, and was sent to a hell in the guise of a girls’ school. That Jane was unfairly accused of wickedness, however, while I can no better answer my detractors than to thank them for their pains over stating the obvious.
It was the boarding school that taught me to act as a wolf in girl’s clothing should: skulking, a greyer shadow within a grey landscape. It was London which formed me into a pale, wide-eyed creature with an errant laugh, a lust for life and for dirty vocabulary, and a knife in her pockets. It was Charles who changed everything, when I fell in love with him under the burdens of a false identity and a blighted conscience. The beginning of a memoir could be made in any of those places, but without my dear cousin Edwin Barbary, none of the rest would have happened at all, so I hereby begin my account with the unembellished truth:
Reader, I murdered him.
~~~
I may always have been wicked, but I was not always universally loathed. For instance, I remember my mother asking me at five years old, “Are you hurt, cherie?”
Then as now, I owned a pallid complexion and listlessly curling hair the colour of hazelnut shells. Having just fallen flat on my face in the garden behind our cottage on the outskirts of Highgate House, I considered whether or not to cry. The strawberries I had gathered were crushed under my apron, painting me with sweet gore. I pored over the best stratagems to gain my mother’s undivided attention perennially in those days—back when I believed I might be merely naughty, fit to be punished in the here and not the hereafter.
As it happened, my mother had been well all day. We had navigated no weeping, no laudanum, no gnawing at already-bleeding fingernails; she was teasing and coaxing, snatching my hand up as she wondered whether we might cover some biscuits with berries and fresh honey and host an impromptu picnic.
Therefore, I saw no need to cry. Instead, I stuck out my tongue at the offending root and gulped down the swelling at the back of my throat.
“I’m fine,” I told her, “though my wrist is sore.”
Smiling from where she sat on a quilted blanket beneath our cascading willow, she called, “Come here then, and let me see.”
My mother was French. She spoke to me often in that language, and I found this flattering; she directed her native tongue at no one else unless she desired to illustrate their ignorance. She seemed to me unpredictable and glimmering as a butterfly, one worthy of being collected and displayed under glass. I was proud of her; I belonged to her. She noticed me when no one else bothered, and I could make her laugh when she could bear no one else.
Ma mere studied my wrist, brushed the specks of juice and flesh from my pinafore, and directed a dry look in my eyes.
“It is not very serious,” she declared lightly in French. “Not even to a spun-sugar little girl.”
“It hurts,” I insisted, thinking it may have been better to cry after all.
“Then it is most profoundly serious to me,” she proclaimed, again in French, and proceeded to kiss me until I was helpless with giggling.
“And I lost all the berries.”
“But consider—there is no harm done. We shall go and gather more. After all, have you anything of consequence to do?”
The answer was no; there was nothing of consequence to do, as this garden party took place at midnight under a wan, watchful moon. Having spent my entire life in my mother’s company, I thought nothing amiss herein, though I was vexed I had not seen the root which had tripped me. Surely other little girls donned lace-lined frocks and enjoyed picnics featuring trifle and tea cakes, sitting with their mothers under the jewel-strewn canopy of starlight, never dreaming of sleep until the cold dew threatened and we began to shiver.
Do they not? I would anxiously ask myself.
It is relevant that my beloved mother, Anne-Laure Steele, was detested throughout our familial estate, and for two sound reasons. First, as I mentioned, she was—tragically and irrevocably—French. Second, my mother was beautiful.
I do not mean beautiful in the conventional insipid fashion; I mean that my mother was actually beautiful, bizarrely so, in the ghostly, wide-gazed sense. She possessed a determined square chin, a chin I share, so that she always looked stubborn even when meekness was selling at a premium. Her hair was dark with a brick-red sheen and her almond-shaped eyes were framed beneath by pretty caverns; her wrists had thin scars like pearlescent bracelets which I did not then understand.
At times she screamed under the indifferent moon in French for my dead father. At others she refused to budge from the bed until, groaning at the slanting afternoon light, she allowed our combined cook and housemaid, Agatha, to ply her with tea.
What’s the matter, Mamma? I would ask softly. Now I am grown, I comprehend her answers far better than I did then.
Only that yesterday was so very, very long.
Only that my eyes are tired and nothing in the new novel I thought I’d like so well means as much to me as I imagined it would.
Only that I cannot think of a useful occupation, and when I do the task daunts me, and so cannot attempt it anyhow, sweet one.
Never could I predict when her smile would blaze forth again, nor earn enough of the feathery kisses she would drop to my brow inexplicably—as if I was worthy of them for no reason at all.
In short, my mother and I—two friendly monsters—found each other lovely and hoped daily that others would find us so as well.
They did not.
~~~
I shall explain how I embarked upon a life of infamy, but first what my mother told me regarding my inheritance.
When I was six years old, my mother announced in French, in August, in the shade-dappled garden, “One day you will have everything, cherie, even the main house. It all belonged to your father and will always be yours—there are documents to this effect despite the fact inheritance for girls is always a highly complicated matter. Meanwhile, our cottage may be poor and plain, but you understand the many difficulties.”
I did not fully understand the many difficulties, though I assumed my aunt and cousin, who lived in the estate proper, did so because they were haughty and wanted the entire pile of mossy stonework, complete with dour servants and taspetries hanging somber as funeral shrouds, to themselves. Neither did I think our cottage, with its mullioned windows and its roaring fireplaces and its cheery bay windows, was either poor or plain. I did, however, understand particular difficulties, ones regarding how well we got on with our relations.
“You see the way your aunt looks at me—you know we cannot live at the main house. Here we are safe and warm and friendly and ourselves,” she added fretfully, worrying at the cuticle upon her left thumb as her eyes pooled.
“Je deteste la manse,” I announced.
Passing her my ever-ready kerchief, I dried her tears. I plucked wild sorrel to sprinkle over our fish supper and told everyone who would listen—which amounted only to my mother and frayed, friendly Agatha—let us always live just as we please, for I love you both.
Such was not to be.
~~~
My aunt Mrs. Patience Barbary, mother of Edwin Barbary, was like my mother a widow. She had been wed to Mr. Richard Barbary; Mr. Richard Barbary was the half-brother of my own father, Jonathan Steele, whose claim to Highgate House was entire and never called into question in my presence.
In fact, one of our visits to the main house, shortly after my ninth birthday, centered around just such a discussion.
“It is so very kind of you to have us for tea,” Anne-Laure Steele said, her smile glinting subtly. “I have said often to Jane that she should better familiarise herself with the estate—after all, she will live here when she is grown, and mon Dieu, to think what mismanagement could occur if she did not know its...I think, in English, intricacies?”
Aunt Patience was a sturdy woman wearing perennial mourning black, though she never otherwise appeared to regret her lack of spouse. Perhaps she was mourning something else entirely: her lost youth, for example, or the heathens in darkest Ethiope who perished in ignorance of Christ.
Certainly my uncle Richard was never mentioned nor seemed he much missed, which I found curious since his portraits were scattered throughout the house—a wedding watercolour from a friend in the drawing room, an oil study of a distinguished man of business in the library. Uncle Richard had owned a set of defined, almost pouting lips, an arched brow with a peaked head of dark hair, and something rakish in his eyes made him seem more dashing than I imagined “men of business” ought to look—ants all walking very fast with their heads down, a row of indistinguishable umbrellas. I thought, had I known him, I should have liked him. I wondered what possessed him to marry Aunt Patience of all people.
Thankfully, Patience Barbary was blessed with a face ensuring that conjugal affronts would not happen twice, which did her tremendous credit—or at least, she always threw beauty in the teeth, as it were, of my own Mamma, who smiled frigidly following such ripostes. Aunt Patience had a very wide frog’s visage with a ruddy complexion and lips like a seam in stonemasonry.
“So much time passed in our great Empire,” Aunt Patience sighed following my mother’s uncertainty over vocabulary. “And despite that, such a terrible facility with our language. I ask you, is that a proper example to set for the—as you would have it—future mistress of Highgate House?”
“It might not be,” my mother replied with snow lacing her tone, “but I am not often invited to practice your tongue.”
“Oh!” my aunt mused. “That must be very vexing.”
I yearned to leap to my mother’s defense, but sat there helplessly dumb, for my aunt hated me only marginally less than she did my mother. After all, I was awkward and gangly, possessed only of my Mamma’s too-thin neck and too-thoughtful expressions. My eyes were likewise catlike—voluptuous, in truth—but the plainest of ordinary cedar browns in colour. My mother ought to have done better by me, I thought on occasion. Her own eyes were a strange, distant topaz like shards of frozen honey.
I never blamed my father, Jonathan Steele, for my shortcomings. I never expected anything of him—not remembering him—and thus could not expect more of him.
“Aimes-tu votre gateau?” my mother asked me next.
“Ce n’est pas tres bien, Mamma.”
Aunt Patience simmered beneath her widow’s weeds; she supposed the French language a threat and, in retrospect, she may have been correct.
“Pauvres petite,” my mother commiserated.
Mamma and Aunt Patience embarked upon a resounding and communicative silence, and I felt Cousin Edwin’s eyes on me like a set of hot pinpricks; when the adults abandoned decorum in favour of spitting false compliments and heartfelt censures at one another, he launched his offensive.
“I’ve a new archery set I should show you, Jane,” he murmured.
For a child’s tones, Edwin’s were weirdly insuinuating. The quick bloom of instinctual camaraderie always withered upon the instant I recalled what my cousin was actually like. Meanwhile, I wanted to see a new archery set very much indeed—only sans Edwin or, better still, with a different Edwin altogether.
My cousin was four years my elder, thirteen at the time. Our relationship had always been peculiar, but as of 1837, it had begun to take on a darker cast. I do not mean only on his behalf—I alternately ignored and engaged him, and was brought to task for this capriciousness by every adult in our household. I let them assume me fickle rather than snobbish when actually I was both. Granted, I needed him; he was closer my own age than anyone, and he seemed nigh-drowning for my attention when no one else save my mother noticed that I breathed their castoff air.
Edwin, on the other hand, was what his mother considered a model child; he was brown-haired and red-faced and sheepdog-simple. He chewed upon his bottom lip perennially, as if afraid it might go suddenly missing.
“Have you seen the new mare yet?” he inquired next. “We might take a drive in the fly-trap tomorrow.”
...
Revue de presse :
“...I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your 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 book titled 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 a friend or a lover—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 labeled eccentric.
Faulting the work for its wild fancies seems petty, however, for there are marvellous moments within. I might myself once have written:
Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?
I left such reflections behind me in childhood, at the bottom of the small ravine where my first cousin drew his final gurgling breaths. Yet I find myself pitying the strange, kindly Jane in the novel whose biography is so weirdly similar; she, too, was as welcome in her aunt’s household as are churchmice in the Communion larder, and was sent to a hell in the guise of a girls’ school. That Jane was unfairly accused of wickedness, however, while I can no better answer my detractors than to thank them for their pains over stating the obvious.
It was the boarding school that taught me to act as a wolf in girl’s clothing should: skulking, a greyer shadow within a grey landscape. It was London which formed me into a pale, wide-eyed creature with an errant laugh, a lust for life and for dirty vocabulary, and a knife in her pockets. It was Charles who changed everything, when I fell in love with him under the burdens of a false identity and a blighted conscience. The beginning of a memoir could be made in any of those places, but without my dear cousin Edwin Barbary, none of the rest would have happened at all, so I hereby begin my account with the unembellished truth:
Reader, I murdered him.
~~~
I may always have been wicked, but I was not always universally loathed. For instance, I remember my mother asking me at five years old, “Are you hurt, cherie?”
Then as now, I owned a pallid complexion and listlessly curling hair the colour of hazelnut shells. Having just fallen flat on my face in the garden behind our cottage on the outskirts of Highgate House, I considered whether or not to cry. The strawberries I had gathered were crushed under my apron, painting me with sweet gore. I pored over the best stratagems to gain my mother’s undivided attention perennially in those days—back when I believed I might be merely naughty, fit to be punished in the here and not the hereafter.
As it happened, my mother had been well all day. We had navigated no weeping, no laudanum, no gnawing at already-bleeding fingernails; she was teasing and coaxing, snatching my hand up as she wondered whether we might cover some biscuits with berries and fresh honey and host an impromptu picnic.
Therefore, I saw no need to cry. Instead, I stuck out my tongue at the offending root and gulped down the swelling at the back of my throat.
“I’m fine,” I told her, “though my wrist is sore.”
Smiling from where she sat on a quilted blanket beneath our cascading willow, she called, “Come here then, and let me see.”
My mother was French. She spoke to me often in that language, and I found this flattering; she directed her native tongue at no one else unless she desired to illustrate their ignorance. She seemed to me unpredictable and glimmering as a butterfly, one worthy of being collected and displayed under glass. I was proud of her; I belonged to her. She noticed me when no one else bothered, and I could make her laugh when she could bear no one else.
Ma mere studied my wrist, brushed the specks of juice and flesh from my pinafore, and directed a dry look in my eyes.
“It is not very serious,” she declared lightly in French. “Not even to a spun-sugar little girl.”
“It hurts,” I insisted, thinking it may have been better to cry after all.
“Then it is most profoundly serious to me,” she proclaimed, again in French, and proceeded to kiss me until I was helpless with giggling.
“And I lost all the berries.”
“But consider—there is no harm done. We shall go and gather more. After all, have you anything of consequence to do?”
The answer was no; there was nothing of consequence to do, as this garden party took place at midnight under a wan, watchful moon. Having spent my entire life in my mother’s company, I thought nothing amiss herein, though I was vexed I had not seen the root which had tripped me. Surely other little girls donned lace-lined frocks and enjoyed picnics featuring trifle and tea cakes, sitting with their mothers under the jewel-strewn canopy of starlight, never dreaming of sleep until the cold dew threatened and we began to shiver.
Do they not? I would anxiously ask myself.
It is relevant that my beloved mother, Anne-Laure Steele, was detested throughout our familial estate, and for two sound reasons. First, as I mentioned, she was—tragically and irrevocably—French. Second, my mother was beautiful.
I do not mean beautiful in the conventional insipid fashion; I mean that my mother was actually beautiful, bizarrely so, in the ghostly, wide-gazed sense. She possessed a determined square chin, a chin I share, so that she always looked stubborn even when meekness was selling at a premium. Her hair was dark with a brick-red sheen and her almond-shaped eyes were framed beneath by pretty caverns; her wrists had thin scars like pearlescent bracelets which I did not then understand.
At times she screamed under the indifferent moon in French for my dead father. At others she refused to budge from the bed until, groaning at the slanting afternoon light, she allowed our combined cook and housemaid, Agatha, to ply her with tea.
What’s the matter, Mamma? I would ask softly. Now I am grown, I comprehend her answers far better than I did then.
Only that yesterday was so very, very long.
Only that my eyes are tired and nothing in the new novel I thought I’d like so well means as much to me as I imagined it would.
Only that I cannot think of a useful occupation, and when I do the task daunts me, and so cannot attempt it anyhow, sweet one.
Never could I predict when her smile would blaze forth again, nor earn enough of the feathery kisses she would drop to my brow inexplicably—as if I was worthy of them for no reason at all.
In short, my mother and I—two friendly monsters—found each other lovely and hoped daily that others would find us so as well.
They did not.
~~~
I shall explain how I embarked upon a life of infamy, but first what my mother told me regarding my inheritance.
When I was six years old, my mother announced in French, in August, in the shade-dappled garden, “One day you will have everything, cherie, even the main house. It all belonged to your father and will always be yours—there are documents to this effect despite the fact inheritance for girls is always a highly complicated matter. Meanwhile, our cottage may be poor and plain, but you understand the many difficulties.”
I did not fully understand the many difficulties, though I assumed my aunt and cousin, who lived in the estate proper, did so because they were haughty and wanted the entire pile of mossy stonework, complete with dour servants and taspetries hanging somber as funeral shrouds, to themselves. Neither did I think our cottage, with its mullioned windows and its roaring fireplaces and its cheery bay windows, was either poor or plain. I did, however, understand particular difficulties, ones regarding how well we got on with our relations.
“You see the way your aunt looks at me—you know we cannot live at the main house. Here we are safe and warm and friendly and ourselves,” she added fretfully, worrying at the cuticle upon her left thumb as her eyes pooled.
“Je deteste la manse,” I announced.
Passing her my ever-ready kerchief, I dried her tears. I plucked wild sorrel to sprinkle over our fish supper and told everyone who would listen—which amounted only to my mother and frayed, friendly Agatha—let us always live just as we please, for I love you both.
Such was not to be.
~~~
My aunt Mrs. Patience Barbary, mother of Edwin Barbary, was like my mother a widow. She had been wed to Mr. Richard Barbary; Mr. Richard Barbary was the half-brother of my own father, Jonathan Steele, whose claim to Highgate House was entire and never called into question in my presence.
In fact, one of our visits to the main house, shortly after my ninth birthday, centered around just such a discussion.
“It is so very kind of you to have us for tea,” Anne-Laure Steele said, her smile glinting subtly. “I have said often to Jane that she should better familiarise herself with the estate—after all, she will live here when she is grown, and mon Dieu, to think what mismanagement could occur if she did not know its...I think, in English, intricacies?”
Aunt Patience was a sturdy woman wearing perennial mourning black, though she never otherwise appeared to regret her lack of spouse. Perhaps she was mourning something else entirely: her lost youth, for example, or the heathens in darkest Ethiope who perished in ignorance of Christ.
Certainly my uncle Richard was never mentioned nor seemed he much missed, which I found curious since his portraits were scattered throughout the house—a wedding watercolour from a friend in the drawing room, an oil study of a distinguished man of business in the library. Uncle Richard had owned a set of defined, almost pouting lips, an arched brow with a peaked head of dark hair, and something rakish in his eyes made him seem more dashing than I imagined “men of business” ought to look—ants all walking very fast with their heads down, a row of indistinguishable umbrellas. I thought, had I known him, I should have liked him. I wondered what possessed him to marry Aunt Patience of all people.
Thankfully, Patience Barbary was blessed with a face ensuring that conjugal affronts would not happen twice, which did her tremendous credit—or at least, she always threw beauty in the teeth, as it were, of my own Mamma, who smiled frigidly following such ripostes. Aunt Patience had a very wide frog’s visage with a ruddy complexion and lips like a seam in stonemasonry.
“So much time passed in our great Empire,” Aunt Patience sighed following my mother’s uncertainty over vocabulary. “And despite that, such a terrible facility with our language. I ask you, is that a proper example to set for the—as you would have it—future mistress of Highgate House?”
“It might not be,” my mother replied with snow lacing her tone, “but I am not often invited to practice your tongue.”
“Oh!” my aunt mused. “That must be very vexing.”
I yearned to leap to my mother’s defense, but sat there helplessly dumb, for my aunt hated me only marginally less than she did my mother. After all, I was awkward and gangly, possessed only of my Mamma’s too-thin neck and too-thoughtful expressions. My eyes were likewise catlike—voluptuous, in truth—but the plainest of ordinary cedar browns in colour. My mother ought to have done better by me, I thought on occasion. Her own eyes were a strange, distant topaz like shards of frozen honey.
I never blamed my father, Jonathan Steele, for my shortcomings. I never expected anything of him—not remembering him—and thus could not expect more of him.
“Aimes-tu votre gateau?” my mother asked me next.
“Ce n’est pas tres bien, Mamma.”
Aunt Patience simmered beneath her widow’s weeds; she supposed the French language a threat and, in retrospect, she may have been correct.
“Pauvres petite,” my mother commiserated.
Mamma and Aunt Patience embarked upon a resounding and communicative silence, and I felt Cousin Edwin’s eyes on me like a set of hot pinpricks; when the adults abandoned decorum in favour of spitting false compliments and heartfelt censures at one another, he launched his offensive.
“I’ve a new archery set I should show you, Jane,” he murmured.
For a child’s tones, Edwin’s were weirdly insuinuating. The quick bloom of instinctual camaraderie always withered upon the instant I recalled what my cousin was actually like. Meanwhile, I wanted to see a new archery set very much indeed—only sans Edwin or, better still, with a different Edwin altogether.
My cousin was four years my elder, thirteen at the time. Our relationship had always been peculiar, but as of 1837, it had begun to take on a darker cast. I do not mean only on his behalf—I alternately ignored and engaged him, and was brought to task for this capriciousness by every adult in our household. I let them assume me fickle rather than snobbish when actually I was both. Granted, I needed him; he was closer my own age than anyone, and he seemed nigh-drowning for my attention when no one else save my mother noticed that I breathed their castoff air.
Edwin, on the other hand, was what his mother considered a model child; he was brown-haired and red-faced and sheepdog-simple. He chewed upon his bottom lip perennially, as if afraid it might go suddenly missing.
“Have you seen the new mare yet?” he inquired next. “We might take a drive in the fly-trap tomorrow.”
...
Praise for Jane Steele
Nominated for a Macavity Award—Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Novel
Part of NPR’s Guide to 2016’s Great Reads
An Amazon Best Book of 2016 So Far (June, 2016)
“Witty and exquisitely plotted, this is such a delectable treat ‘tis a pity it has to end.”—People
“[Jane Steele’s] crimes are wonderfully entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review
“An entertaining riff on Jane Eyre...sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety.”—USA Today
“Jane Eyre gets a dose of Dexter. In a story that's equal parts romance, thriller, and satire, the Brontë heroine is made over into a fighter with a shadowy past.”—Cosmopolitan
“A thrill ride of a novel. A must read for lovers of Jane Eyre, dark humor, and mystery.”—PopSugar.com
“Delectable...Bronte fans and unfamiliar readers alike will be sucked into Jane's rich story, filled with love and secrets a plenty. This book will take you on a dark and unforgettable journey.”—Bustle.com
“This book scratched all my favorite itches: Victoriana, feminist rage, and excellent, gut-punch sentences. You’ll love this Jane just as much as you love the original.”—BookRiot.com
“Faye’s skill at historical mystery was evident in her nineteenth-century New York trilogy, but this slyly satiric stand-alone takes her prowess to new levels. A must for Brontë devotees; wickedly entertaining for all.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Young Jane Steele’s favorite book, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, mirrors her life both too little and too much...In an arresting tale of dark humor and sometimes gory imagination, Faye has produced a heroine worthy of the gothic literature canon but reminiscent of detective fiction.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“I loved this book! The language rings true, the period details are correct. Jane Steele is a joy, both plucky and rueful in her assessment of her dark deeds. The plotting is solid and the pacing sublime. If this were a series, this would be the perfect introduction. As a stand-alone, I give it an A+.”—Sue Grafton, #1 New York Times–bestselling author
“This is a wonderfully wicked book. The deadly first chapter actually made me gasp. Jane Steele is a character you will not soon forget. Great evil fun!”—R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series
“Lyndsay Faye pulls off the most elusive feat of historical fiction: to give us a book that reads as though it was unearthed from a perfectly preserved antique chest. Sneakily charming and wildly well written, like Faye's other novels JANE STEELE demands attention.”—Matthew Pearl, New York Times–bestselling author of The Dante Club and The Last Bookaneer
“I’ve just read the next best thing...Enhanced by truly original and poetic turns of phrase...throughout its compelling narrative, Jane Steele pleas for a comfortable chair, a crackling fireplace, and an ideal adult beverage to guarantee a thoroughly pleasurable winter evening.”—Otto Penzler, Owner of The Mysterious Bookshop
“Lethal good fun! In Jane, Lyndsay Faye has created a heroine unwilling to suffer tyrants or fools. The result is a darkly-humorous, elegantly-crafted story of an "accidental" vigilante. A delicious read.”—Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist
“Enchanting. Jane Steele is beautifully rendered and utterly captivating, from the first cry of ‘reader, I murdered him’ to its final pages. Lyndsay Faye is a masterful storyteller, and this is her finest tale yet.”—Maria Konnikova, New York Times–bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
“The book I never knew I always wanted to read. Gripping, twisty, and fiendishly clever, Jane Steele picks you up by the throat and never lets you go, taking you on an exhilaratingly wild ride. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in ages--the only thing it left me wanting was MORE Jane Steele!”—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author of A Curious Beginning
“From the gasp-inducing moment Jane Steele utters the words "reader, I murdered him", you know you are in for a rollicking romp of an adventure that recasts the Jane Eyre story in an entirely new light. But mixed in with the verve and vivacity is a story of real heart, exemplary, near-forgotten history, and an utterly unforgettable heroine. Brava to Lyndsay Faye for what's already one of my favorite thrillers of the year.”—Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s
“Add Jane Steele to that club of unforgettable antiheroes—Tom Ripley, Hannibal Lecter, and Dexter Morgan—who do dreadful things to bad people. Bold, inventive, and charmingly wicked, this instantly addictive novel pays homage to Jane Eyre while being wholly original. Lyndsay Faye has created a masterpiece.”—Hilary Davidson, Anthony Award–winning author of Blood Always Tells
“Jane Steele is a bold and imaginative undertaking—wickedly entertaining and exquisitely unique in its execution...With thrills, mystery and romance, the story is striking and imaginative as we see how Brontë’s Jane Eyre gives meaning to Jane’s acts. Dark, satirical humor coupled with sharp dialogue make this a novel that’s refreshingly compelling.”—USA Today (Happily Ever After blog)
“Hand to my heart, this book positively made me swoon...Jane Steele is an homage to Jane Eyre, yet infinitely better, since Jane Steele is no one’s victim; she bends life to her will instead of drifting along according to fate’s whimsy...Jane is a thrilling protagonist...I wish that I could read this again for the first time—but I’ve no doubt it will be just as good when I read it for the third and fourth times.”—Crimespree Magazine
“For anyone who read Jane Eyre wishing for swifter, more final fates for the cruelest characters, Jane Steele is here to grant your wishes...a fresh and imaginative takeoff on Jane Eyre, and will leave readers with plenty of fodder for discussion.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Faye hasn't embarked on a retelling of Brontë's masterwork, or anyone else's, for that matter. Her novel pays homage to the greats, yet offers a heroine whose murky past and murderous present remind us that some female behavior in other eras never made it into print...The satisfaction in this novel is its conviction that the self is enriched by an understanding of others, whether their motives are villainous or amicable.”—NPR
“A beautifully written, thoroughly engaging and brilliantly satirical novel...Jane Steele is an extraordinary, likeable narrator, and Faye’s other characters are just as memorable. The sharp and tragic Mr. Thornfield gives Bronte’s Mr. Rochester a run for his money. This book, whether you’re trying to puzzle out the mysteries or just lapping up Faye’s brilliant humor, is an excellent homage to Bronte and simply a treasure on its own.”—New York Daily News
“A smart satirical gothic romance that plays as much to Charlotte Brontë's fans as Edgar Allan Poe's...Flushed with humour and humors, this novel is a hoot. I laughed not only at Jane's audacity as a character...but also the author's accomplishments skillfully mashing up a modern serial killer novel with a 19th-century novel of manners.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Lyndsay Faye give us all the pomp and circumstance of an old English novel, but her murderous twists turn the genre on its head in way that’s sarcastic and satisfying.”—Southern Living
Nominated for a Macavity Award—Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Novel
Part of NPR’s Guide to 2016’s Great Reads
An Amazon Best Book of 2016 So Far (June, 2016)
“Witty and exquisitely plotted, this is such a delectable treat ‘tis a pity it has to end.”—People
“[Jane Steele’s] crimes are wonderfully entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review
“An entertaining riff on Jane Eyre...sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety.”—USA Today
“Jane Eyre gets a dose of Dexter. In a story that's equal parts romance, thriller, and satire, the Brontë heroine is made over into a fighter with a shadowy past.”—Cosmopolitan
“A thrill ride of a novel. A must read for lovers of Jane Eyre, dark humor, and mystery.”—PopSugar.com
“Delectable...Bronte fans and unfamiliar readers alike will be sucked into Jane's rich story, filled with love and secrets a plenty. This book will take you on a dark and unforgettable journey.”—Bustle.com
“This book scratched all my favorite itches: Victoriana, feminist rage, and excellent, gut-punch sentences. You’ll love this Jane just as much as you love the original.”—BookRiot.com
“Faye’s skill at historical mystery was evident in her nineteenth-century New York trilogy, but this slyly satiric stand-alone takes her prowess to new levels. A must for Brontë devotees; wickedly entertaining for all.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Young Jane Steele’s favorite book, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, mirrors her life both too little and too much...In an arresting tale of dark humor and sometimes gory imagination, Faye has produced a heroine worthy of the gothic literature canon but reminiscent of detective fiction.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“I loved this book! The language rings true, the period details are correct. Jane Steele is a joy, both plucky and rueful in her assessment of her dark deeds. The plotting is solid and the pacing sublime. If this were a series, this would be the perfect introduction. As a stand-alone, I give it an A+.”—Sue Grafton, #1 New York Times–bestselling author
“This is a wonderfully wicked book. The deadly first chapter actually made me gasp. Jane Steele is a character you will not soon forget. Great evil fun!”—R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series
“Lyndsay Faye pulls off the most elusive feat of historical fiction: to give us a book that reads as though it was unearthed from a perfectly preserved antique chest. Sneakily charming and wildly well written, like Faye's other novels JANE STEELE demands attention.”—Matthew Pearl, New York Times–bestselling author of The Dante Club and The Last Bookaneer
“I’ve just read the next best thing...Enhanced by truly original and poetic turns of phrase...throughout its compelling narrative, Jane Steele pleas for a comfortable chair, a crackling fireplace, and an ideal adult beverage to guarantee a thoroughly pleasurable winter evening.”—Otto Penzler, Owner of The Mysterious Bookshop
“Lethal good fun! In Jane, Lyndsay Faye has created a heroine unwilling to suffer tyrants or fools. The result is a darkly-humorous, elegantly-crafted story of an "accidental" vigilante. A delicious read.”—Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist
“Enchanting. Jane Steele is beautifully rendered and utterly captivating, from the first cry of ‘reader, I murdered him’ to its final pages. Lyndsay Faye is a masterful storyteller, and this is her finest tale yet.”—Maria Konnikova, New York Times–bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
“The book I never knew I always wanted to read. Gripping, twisty, and fiendishly clever, Jane Steele picks you up by the throat and never lets you go, taking you on an exhilaratingly wild ride. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in ages--the only thing it left me wanting was MORE Jane Steele!”—Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author of A Curious Beginning
“From the gasp-inducing moment Jane Steele utters the words "reader, I murdered him", you know you are in for a rollicking romp of an adventure that recasts the Jane Eyre story in an entirely new light. But mixed in with the verve and vivacity is a story of real heart, exemplary, near-forgotten history, and an utterly unforgettable heroine. Brava to Lyndsay Faye for what's already one of my favorite thrillers of the year.”—Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s
“Add Jane Steele to that club of unforgettable antiheroes—Tom Ripley, Hannibal Lecter, and Dexter Morgan—who do dreadful things to bad people. Bold, inventive, and charmingly wicked, this instantly addictive novel pays homage to Jane Eyre while being wholly original. Lyndsay Faye has created a masterpiece.”—Hilary Davidson, Anthony Award–winning author of Blood Always Tells
“Jane Steele is a bold and imaginative undertaking—wickedly entertaining and exquisitely unique in its execution...With thrills, mystery and romance, the story is striking and imaginative as we see how Brontë’s Jane Eyre gives meaning to Jane’s acts. Dark, satirical humor coupled with sharp dialogue make this a novel that’s refreshingly compelling.”—USA Today (Happily Ever After blog)
“Hand to my heart, this book positively made me swoon...Jane Steele is an homage to Jane Eyre, yet infinitely better, since Jane Steele is no one’s victim; she bends life to her will instead of drifting along according to fate’s whimsy...Jane is a thrilling protagonist...I wish that I could read this again for the first time—but I’ve no doubt it will be just as good when I read it for the third and fourth times.”—Crimespree Magazine
“For anyone who read Jane Eyre wishing for swifter, more final fates for the cruelest characters, Jane Steele is here to grant your wishes...a fresh and imaginative takeoff on Jane Eyre, and will leave readers with plenty of fodder for discussion.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Faye hasn't embarked on a retelling of Brontë's masterwork, or anyone else's, for that matter. Her novel pays homage to the greats, yet offers a heroine whose murky past and murderous present remind us that some female behavior in other eras never made it into print...The satisfaction in this novel is its conviction that the self is enriched by an understanding of others, whether their motives are villainous or amicable.”—NPR
“A beautifully written, thoroughly engaging and brilliantly satirical novel...Jane Steele is an extraordinary, likeable narrator, and Faye’s other characters are just as memorable. The sharp and tragic Mr. Thornfield gives Bronte’s Mr. Rochester a run for his money. This book, whether you’re trying to puzzle out the mysteries or just lapping up Faye’s brilliant humor, is an excellent homage to Bronte and simply a treasure on its own.”—New York Daily News
“A smart satirical gothic romance that plays as much to Charlotte Brontë's fans as Edgar Allan Poe's...Flushed with humour and humors, this novel is a hoot. I laughed not only at Jane's audacity as a character...but also the author's accomplishments skillfully mashing up a modern serial killer novel with a 19th-century novel of manners.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Lyndsay Faye give us all the pomp and circumstance of an old English novel, but her murderous twists turn the genre on its head in way that’s sarcastic and satisfying.”—Southern Living
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- ÉditeurG.P. Putnam's Sons
- Date d'édition2017
- ISBN 10 0425283208
- ISBN 13 9780425283202
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages464
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