One of the measures of a good book is that it makes the reader hungry for more about the subject or the author. That is surely the case with this novelization of the life of Emily Brontë and her sisters. Told from Emily’s viewpoint it is an intimate, even startingly frank look at early Victorian society and its literary landscape. More graphic about emotions, sex, even bodily functions than we are given to understand it rings with truth. It is supposed that the English were a cold, haughty people who eschewed the “baser” aspects of life, but here we are treated to a much earthier aspect of their life. To be sure, they were restrained in public, snobbish in the extreme and soundly bound up in “morals” but in private they were surprisingly sanguine. More study is clearly in order.

The writing is superb, evoking the voice of the time but with a deft turn making the dialogue relevant to modern readers. It is as though one were reading narrative written in the early 19th century but with contemporary sensibilities in mind. The text flows comfortably, the conversations easy, the descriptions of landscape, architecture and society approachable from a 21st century standpoint. It is skillful, to say the least since the author is present but not looming. There are some gently humorous passages attributable to Emily’s wry sense of the absurd, including, from Chapter 12: “…I was capable of hauling her pupils if not to intellectual enlightenment, at least to somewhere in the vicinity.” as part of the recounting of her brief but unpleasant experiences as a teacher. Both Emily and her sister Charlotte were teachers for short periods, governesses, too, but neither took to these endeavors with any vigor.

All the sisters and their brother Branwell seem to have been born writers: they imagined a world of fantasy (Gondal) populated by a complex web of characters whose activities they chronicled throughout their lives, although these stories were not published or even known to exist during their lifetimes. The three young women did publish a volume of poetry under male pseudonyms, Acton, Ellis and Currer Bell since women were largely ignored in the literary world of the time. The title of the book is derived from one of Emily’s verses, referring to the world of Gondal and

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 recommend this book to anyone who is a lover of the Brontes’ work, but those interested in women’s place in Victorian society, literary history or lives of classic artists will love this.