The Bronte Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR Book

“A sweet read even a Wuthering Heights fan can love.” —Entertainment Weekly

Young scholar Sara Frost’s unsuccessful search for the lost love letters of Charlotte Brontë hasn’t won her any favors at her university, particularly now that the glamorous and self-promoting Princess Diana expert, Claire Vigee, has introduced her media-savvy exploits to the staid halls of academia. But it’s not until Sara’s fiancé suddenly leaves her that she begins to question her life’s vocation.

Sara’s jolt brings her to an unusual new world, one populated by a cheerfully amoral Frenchman, a pair of New York eccentrics who pretend to live in the nineteenth century, a lapsed methadone addict and screenwriter, and a Hollywood producer who mistakenly assumes that the short, sad life of Charlotte Brontë has the makings of the next “feel good” movie blockbuster.

The Brontë Project is an irreverent and comic look at love, loss, literature, and pop culture, and a guide to reconciling the mythology of romance with the reality of modern love.

A Redbook Magazine Book Club Pick

Look for the reader’s group guide at the back of this book.

Publishers Weekly

Vandever's irreverent debut novel dips into Victorian letters for inspiration, dredging up romantic angst to frame and foil a love story set in the age of new media. Sara Frost, a timid Charlotte Bront scholar at a fictionalized New York university, is dragging her feet on both her engagement and her thesis, rooting around for Charlotte's vanished letters of unrequited love. The staid campus is roiled with the arrival of self-aggrandizing, firebrand Princess Diana scholar Claire Vigee. Sara's restive fianc Paul, ignited by Claire's exhortations, bids her adieu and heads for Paris. Knocked off balance, Sara finds salvation in New Age narcissist Byrne Eammons, a film producer, who angles to spice up Charlotte's story for modern moviegoers. Drawn to Los Angeles and then Europe, Sara slowly finds her voice-determined not to suffer the fate of the "silent Victorian" she studies. Vandever, a screenwriter, sends up the pretensions of academia and the frippery of "infotainment," with its fast and loose readings of history. As Victorian romance runs up against pop psychology and banal reality, currents of love and longing unite past and present, but Vandever leavens Sara's self-discovery with liberal comic relief in this wickedly clever novel. Agent, Kirsten Manges. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.