Charlotte
(Duck Editions, 2000)
I was invited by a publisher to write an unorthodox continuation of 'Jane Eyre'. So this starts in Victorian fiction and style and continues in the age of feminism.
It oughtn't to work, given that it was written to a challenge, and also at a dark time in my life; but on re-reading, ten years on, it seems to. And it has two serious inter-related themes, the change in woman over a century and a half and different forms of enslavement and dependence.
'I hurtled on, gripped by the simplest desire any reader ever has. I wanted to find out what happened.'
--New Statesman
'The irresistibly melodramatic plot of D.M.Thomas's novel had me completely bewitched.'
--Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
It oughtn't to work, given that it was written to a challenge, and also at a dark time in my life; but on re-reading, ten years on, it seems to. And it has two serious inter-related themes, the change in woman over a century and a half and different forms of enslavement and dependence.
'I hurtled on, gripped by the simplest desire any reader ever has. I wanted to find out what happened.'
--New Statesman
'The irresistibly melodramatic plot of D.M.Thomas's novel had me completely bewitched.'
--Val Hennessy, Daily Mail