Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell

 
From Goodreads

A creative re-imagining of the short life of Emily Brontë, one of England’s greatest writers

Isolated from society, the Brontë children spend all their time inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape she loves and no longer able to immerse herself in the fantastical world of Gondal that she and her younger sister Anne have created, she is simply unable to function.

As a child, Emily witnessed a rare natural phenomenon. After weeks of rain, the peaty soil on Crow Hill became so sodden that the earth exploded. Since then, her life has been dogged by tragedy and repeated failures. Her sisters are desperate to escape their unsatisfactory work as governesses and now the life of her brother Branwell, the hope of the family, is in turmoil. To the outside world, Emily appears taciturn, unexceptional; but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment, ready to burst forth. As the pressure on her grows, another violent phenomenon is about to take place, one that will fuse her imaginary world of Gondal with the landscape Emily loves so passionately, and which will change the literary world.

My thoughts

' Cold in the earth - and fifteen wild Decembers.

From those brown hills, have melted into spring:

Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers

After such years of change and suffering!' 

I enjoyed this story and am more than happy to give it a 4 stars or 8/10.  This was a local Library Reading group read.  Sadly, not all the group enjoyed it as much as I did.  

This was a fictional story based on the Bronte family and their lives, told from the perspective of Emily Brontte.  Whilst it may not be factually correct in every aspect and this was possibly one of the issues that my reading group had with it.  Things like that don't always bother me as we have non fiction books to cover the facts.  I read a book for it's own merits.  This one did draw me into the bleak and harrowing lives that the Bronte family had. 

At times I felt as if I was on the Yorkshire moors with them when they were out walking.  The author knows how to draw you in and make you feel that you are there along with the characters.

I have included a couple of quotes below that made me think for different reasons. 

Quote

'Remember when we read Paradise Lost for the first time? How compelling we found Satan, though we knew we shouldn't. We fought among ourselves to read those passages! I've always believed that Satan must have set out to be a good angel but could not help himself, it was not in his nature. I want my hero to be just as bad and compelling. If he cannot have what he wants, then the whole world must pay for his pain and suffering.'

Well I suppose that that is one way of looking at how Satan developed into the person he is portrayed to be and what a way to think of how to develop your character in the story..

FINALLY, this quote below resonated with me as I often have similar thoughts.  I often wonder what things will be like when I am no longer alive.

'I struggled to conceive of a world in which I no longer existed, every thought and feeling inside this me-shaped container of flesh and bones, gone. Life could end with the snap of a bone, one misfire of a heart, and yet mine had seemed unending, unbreakable.'

This book is definitely worth reading if you ever come across it.