Reviews for Love-Lies-Bleeding

The average rating for Love-Lies-Bleeding based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-09-12 00:00:00 Katsuyuki Fujikawa Every time I finish a Charlotte Bronte novel, my heart pounds and my mind is disoriented. After reaching the end of her stories, closing her pages for the last time, and remembering the long passages written out in long-hand, it's all like slowly surfacing from the depths of another world, and you're back home in reality, not quite sure you want to be there. Although it doesn't have the exquisite tragedy of Villette or the kick-ass karate-chop combos of romance, ghosts, crazy ladies in the attic, religious nut-jobs, and true love found in Jane Eyre, The Professor is still one hell of a novel. Its themes are common to Bronte's novels: Catholic wickedness (aka, "Romish wizardcraft" in this book -- HAHAHA!), relationships among the different social classes, social-restraint, and independence. Illustrating these themes are our upright, plain, poor, and virtuous narrator and his love interest, who are contrasted by the so-goddamn-evil-i-love-her Zoraide Reuter and her equally two-faced and back stabbing boyfriend, M. Pelet. In many ways inferior to Jane Eyre, and in many other ways a "rough draft" of Villette, this novel is probably not the author's best. But I loved it. Why? Because Charlotte Brtone wrote it. Bronte famously wrote that Jane Austen's writing was like "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers: but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck ... rather, comprehensive, measured, balanced, certainly "highly cultivated."" What is Bronte then? Her writing is wild, like weeds, growing out of control and wrapping around you eyes, heart, and mind, but she planted those weeds and cultivated them just as carefully as Austen cultivated her garden -- but with more skill. Bronte gets you in a snare from which you cannot break free. Her words, her writing, her storytelling are all overpowering in their savageness. When you try to release yourself (it's called putting the book down) you'll find your heart beating from the rapid ride that she has taken you on ... and you want to jump right back in. Seriously, I love this woman. Favorite writer EVER!!

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-20 00:00:00 Thomas Eriksen Mr. William Crimsworth newly graduated from exclusive Eton College, writes a letter to his one and only friend Charles, about his adventures since both left the school ( Charles never receives it, having departed for parts unknown). William late mother was an aristocrat but having married "beneath her," had been shunned by her family, something common in the unforgiving mid 19th century England. His father was a wealthy businessman until going bankrupt also deceased. What to do? William has an older brother by ten years Edward, a cold tyrant but rich mill owner he has little seen. Rejecting an offer from Lord Tynedale and the Honorable John Seacombe his maternal uncles, to become a man of the cloth, a rector in a church controlled by Seacombe and even marry one of his six unappealing daughters , young Crimsworth does not like his cousins, they in turn cut loose the ungrateful boy no longer supporting him. So the reluctant distant Edward, gives him a job as a low paying clerk in northern England, a dirty, polluted, ugly town when you can see it through the thick noxious fumes. Translating foreign language business letters, the jealous brother hates the better educated William shows no love, the rich man has little contact with the poor one, kept from Crimsworth Hall... So proper etiquette must be maintained between the two ... the letter ends but life continues, disaster William is dismissed by his enraged brother when an acquaintance, Mr. Hunsden gossips about the ill treatment receives by the younger Mr. Crimsworth. To make amends Mr. Hunsden ( his nefarious plan successful) tells William to travel to Brussels, Belgium, seek better employment and gives him a letter of introduction. Since no other prospects are on the horizon and always wanting to see the continent he complies, receives an offer as an English teacher from the seemingly affable Monsieur Francois Pelet, a Frenchman who owns a boys school in the Belgium capital, does well and later teaches a class next door at the girls school of charming, older Mademoiselle Zoraider Reuter, a native of the country. But conflict appears a love triangle, William and M.Pelet are enamored of the fetching Mademoiselle Reuter though not beautiful, neither is the professor she does sparkle during their romantic walks in her institutes gardens, and enjoys being wanted by the suitors, playing a fun game of causing the men pain...Still the emotions are complicated, more when another enters the scene, Frances Henri a Swiss seamstress living with her old aunt, employed by Mademoiselle Reuter, becomes a pupil in William's English class the not well educated girl, somehow is brilliant the best of his students impossible... the mystery is solved, she had a English mother. The professor starts to like the young shy lady and Zoraider doesn't like this, she is not happy at all. And the school mistress can do much harm... The perplexing Mr. Hunsden arrives in town, curious to discover what his protege has been up to, and the stories revealed...they have not been dull. The inexperienced in life William, learns ( even teachers must too) the mendacity of people ...The great writer Charlotte Bronte's first novel but not published ( you can see why) until she was no more, interesting view of her beginning, the talent is there... in some pages but it just needed more polish and experience to blossom .