'The Witch of Blackbird Pond' by Elizabeth George Speare

Each year I aim to include a spooky theme on Halloween week. This year I've decided to extend it throughout the entire month of October. I'll review four witch-themed books back-to-back, but not the popular, spine-tingling type of novel aimed to disturb and unsettle us. I'll focus on insightful vintage reads which encourage us to consider the topic through the lenses of tradition, history, and even Christian faith. 

This Newbery Award winner is the first. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

This novel won the 1959 Newbery Award, but is set way back in 1687. Sixteen-year-old Kit (Katherine) Tyler is soon to disembark in Connecticut, New England, to gatecrash on relatives who aren't remotely expecting her. She was brought up in Barbados by her grandfather, an indulgent plantation owner who managed his affairs badly and lost everything before he died. Now Kit plans to throw herself on the mercy of her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew who live way across the ocean and have two teenaged daughters of their own. 

Awkward incidents pile up before Kit even sets foot off The Dolphin. While on board, she keeps accidentally shocking or offending the two handsome young men she befriends; Nat Eaton, the captain's son, and John Holbrook, a divinity student bound, like herself, for the colony of Weathersfield.

 Some of Kit's behavior has the potential to get a little hazardous in the new land where she's bound. Kit rescues a child's beloved doll which has fallen overboard, but young women aren't usually proficient swimmers. (For witches float but the innocent sink.) And 'normal' girls generally can't read fluently either, as Kit can. There is no real impetus to learn, for the proper use of reading isn't for fun but to improve our sinful natures. 

It's when she reaches her new home and makes friends with the local oddity, Hannah Tupper, that Kit really begins to gain a suspicious reputation with some of the townsfolk, for Hannah lives isolated in a small rickety house at the edge of a swamp, and she is a Quaker, who folk regard as blasphemous. Throughout the novel, especially when several townspeople fall sick with fever, accusations of outright witchcraft come to a head, although why they believe Hannah Tupper would wish to kill them and their children is anyone's guess.  

But the story is really as much about culture shock as it is about witch hunts. Kit's Puritan relatives are not unsympathetic (which I appreciate) but their niece, with her seven trunks crammed with lavish clothes, is now expected to pull her weight and help out with work she'd only ever seen done by slaves, such as wool-carding, weaving, spinning, cooking, and vegetable garden maintenance.

Worst of all, she has to put up with all those pious, dour Puritans, who find it outrageous when Kit sets some young schoolchildren playacting Bible stories.

The story sometimes lacks depth though. When Aunt Rachel says, 'The Quakers don't take the holy sacraments,' Kit responds, 'So what?' She has evidently given no thought to the significance of what she chews and swallows each week in church. Surely a teenager can chafe under the heavy weight of Puritanical rules without glibly dismissing a major Christian mainstay. Puritans are tiresome at best and downright dangerous at worst, but since Kit is living among them, she might as well try to dig for some bedrock to their staunch faith. Yet there is no evidence that she ever does. 

In fact, I noticed a continuity glitch early on. At first Kit seems not to know what a Puritan even is. (You mean a Roundhead? One of those traitors who murdered King Charles?) Then not long after that, she explains to John how her Aunt Rachel married a Puritan and ran away to America. So she must have known something about them, and at least heard the word before.

There is a comical mix-up in the matter of potential marriage partners. It involves Kit, her cousins, and several young men. We keep reading to find out how these unfortunate liaisons might get untangled when they are in such a massive snarl. Girls and guys who are totally wrong for each other somehow end up engaged. I found the resolution a little too slick, considering what a scramble it was.  

But I grinned to discover that some of these characters were real historical figures. Based on their names, I would have sworn Speare had invented them, especially Mr Eleazar Kimberly, the schoolteacher, and Reverend Gersholm Bulkeley, John's esteemed mentor. If we're thinking in the most traditional, vitriolic sense of the word, the biggest 'witch' in the story is the hate-filled Goodwife Cruff. But no, perhaps she's more like a snake. ('Goodwife Cruff drew in her breath through her teeth in a venomous hiss.') 

I recently landed on a book recommendation forum where several commenters mentioned this as their favorite book ever. Meh, I consider that pretty generous. After the hype I came across, I was a little disappointed. I guess it is refreshing to see three young people actually want to visit an old woman, when in the 21st century young people often need coercing to visit elderly relatives. Perhaps the proverb about forbidden fruit is true.

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 Next week I'll examine a blast from my long-ago past which really utilizes the tradition of the wicked witch.  

'Shakespeare in the Orchard' by Danielle Binks

Summary: A coming-of-age story inspired by true events in Australia in World War I that explores the things that separate us and those that bring us together, from an award-winning author.

MY THOUGHTS:

Tales of World War One from the home front always interest me. This YA novel is an Aussie offering, and since my own forebears include a mixture of British and German settlers, the premise hooked me enough to reserve a copy from the library. 

The setting is Langwarrin on the Mornington Peninsula. The story begins late 1914. Having just turned 14, Jack Thorning is too young to enlist as a soldier like his brother, Matt. Still, he is a fine athlete, a deadly accurate rifleman, and the star of the junior cadets. The old school teacher, Mr Kempster, has inflamed Jack with a passion to defend their nation against the hated Huns. 

Jack and his mother, Ada, have a serious problem. With all able-bodied men away overseas, there are no pickers to help with their five acres of ripe apple trees. The crop will rot, and they'll go broke. But then they receive a repugnant offer they can't refuse. Prisoners from the local enemy alien camp have offered to help struggling farmers and orchardists to harvest their crops for minimum wage. The timing is too crucial, and the labor too cheap to deny. The Thornings are assured that the pickers will be under strict surveillance. 

Jack is in for the biggest attitude readjustment of his life. For of course the poor pickers sent to help are not hostile enemies at all, but a variety of men who have been majorly screwed over by the War Precaution Act of an ultra-sensitive nation. Some have never even set foot on Teutonic soil, others have lost positions in companies they helped found, and even more have been cruelly torn away from their loved ones. 

When the German prisoners decide, for the sake of staying human, to put together their own slapdash production of Hamlet as they pick apples, Jack cannot help but be interested. 

Walter Maberly, Jack's best buddy, is up to his neck in problems of his own. He befriends and champions Lotti, a girl of German descent, whose father is among the prisoners of war. And Walter's dad, the local postmaster, stirs the pot even more by offering Lotti's mother a job. Things get vitriolic, since Mr Maberly is already suspected of pacifist leanings. 

Jack's 19-year-old brother, Matt, is part of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force). His newsy letters home to his family are valuable fodder from a historical perspective, including all the censored words intended to identify place and plan. Ada and Jack know he's in sandy Cairo with his battalion, awaiting their next orders. And with the benefit of decades, we readers predict that will turn out to be Gallipoli Cove (gulp).

At one stage I thumped this book down in disgust over a questionable, spur-of-the-moment decision Jack makes. There are emotive triggers  aplenty. I definitely enjoyed the story but do wonder how well the Shakespearean content will go over with modern teens, the book's target audience. It rings true that a boy like Jack, in 1915, might find himself lured in by the Hamlet rehearsals. But how about his counterparts from the mid 2020s? 

Time will tell. 

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'Bright, Flickering Lights' by D. J. Blackmore

 

Note: I was offered an advanced copy of this brand new book by the author and jumped at the opportunity, to boost my quota of quality Aussie books for this year. 

MY THOUGHTS:

There is lots to love in this YA Australian novel as it is dense with provocative themes. Two unlikely romances, along with a couple of very cool twists tick my personal boxes. But essentially it is a novel about secrets, whether it's the uncanny discovery of a fully-furnished ghost-house, the possible roaming of a legendary Yowie, or things that characters choose to conceal for various reasons. 

The points of view swing throughout the book between three teenage protagonists. 

Young Darcy Calhoun has an indigenous family background which he doubts he'll ever fathom. He lives a somewhat stifled existence with his one-legged, diabetic grandmother and his Auntie Kim, who he regards more as an annoying big sister. Darcy has an inkling that some Stolen Generation trauma is all entwined with their history, but secrets aren't revealed for the asking. Meanwhile, a major crush on his schoolfriend, Margot, keeps him idealistic and optimistic.

Margot Radcliffe is a budding artist and environmental conservationist. She helps her single mother, Annie, nurse and rehabilitate injured wildlife. To this duo, speaking up on behalf of the voiceless is a human obligation. Now that a company sinking coal seam gas wells has invaded their little town, that description fits the vulnerable native species whose lives are at risk. And Margot guards a personal secret which would never fly in her small-town environment. 

Sarah Hardacre resents her stepdad, Tom, to the extent of praying for his demise. Her deep-seated bitterness and insecurity is her own resentful secret. Tom is second in command of the coal gas company. Sarah is convinced that dislike of her and her twin brother, Sam, keeps him at loggerheads with their mother. She despises anything to do with Tom, including his two bull terriers. (Ah, those bull terriers remind me of my brother's sweet boy, who was the same breed and sometimes similarly misunderstood 💓)  

It is a timely book shining light on a very real problem. Since white colonisation, over 100 precious species have become extinct in Australia. But through the voices of coal working characters, Blackmore fairly speaks up for the other side too. They are convinced that at our stage of technology, failure to utilise their resources will revert our nation to the dark ages. It is a volatile and emotional issue. 

This story is saturated with the spirit of Australia, from the flora and fauna whose essence is revealed by the tribal 'Uncles' to several other more general food icons featured. (Tim Tams, Vegemite, Weet-Bix, or Arnott's SAO biscuits, anyone? Or maybe just a girl's day in with sausage rolls and pavlova?) It also explores legends such as the Bunyip or Yowie and the equally mythical self-contained Aussie bloke. This novel makes me patriotic by highlighting what I'm missing from all the non-Australian books out there. 

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'A Power of Roses' by Ruth Park

Summary: Roses were rarely seen at the old Jerusalem hotel.

Life is hard, and for some of the tenants a luxury might be warm feet, cat's meat stew or a five-bob coat from a jumble sale.

In A Power of Roses, Ruth Park draws vivid portraits of Miriam, the tough adolescent heroine; her Uncle Puss, a canny old Irishman; and a colourful assortment of inhabitants who live in the hotel's damp, rat-infested rooms.

MY THOUGHTS:

This story begins so bleakly, I almost talked myself into abandoning it after the first few chapters. But I ended up loving it. So much so that on the strength of reading it, I've just ordered another batch of Ruth Park's vintage novels. 

It tells a story about the riff-raff residents of the dilapidated Jerusalem apartments in the heart of Sydney. These folk each do their best to stay dignified when just trying to stay adequately fed and clothed is incredibly difficult and demoralizing. It begins with young Miriam McKillop buying 'backbones for me cat,' because she and her uncle can't afford higher quality fish. However, the collection of tails, fins, and fish heads is destined to flavor their own stew.

These two are the heart of the story; Irish migrant Uncle Puss McKillop (whose real name is Percival or 'Perce') and canny young Miriam, the great niece he has brought up, who can love with great ferocity. 

Not only does Ruth Park weave us right into the picture with her world-building, but she does it in an intriguing metaphysical way. She entices us readers with the probability of a deeper, invisible plane of existence which infuses the more lovable characters with optimism and hope. For example, 'Miriam was aware of a fairy world, hanging heavenlike behind the accidents of this life', and hence so are we.  

To mention a few other colorful characters their story entwines with, there is young Dunkie, a handsome and opinionated boy who can't walk, and whose self-focus naturally reflects his narrow physical outlook. There is the desperately devout Mr Creepin' Christmas, who runs the fish n' chip shop, and Mr Holland, the shy young minister whose job feels way out of his depth. 

At one stage, the community is rocked by the healing ministry of the Reverend Doctor Maisley, who operates his outreach in a similar style to the Duke and the King from Huckleberry Finn. And I'll keep secret the identity of one of my favorite characters who ushers in change with great panache.

There is a lad named Porgy Ketchel whose fondest dream is to someday work on a garbage truck, which he fears is out of his league. The most menacing presence in the book is Porgy's father, Cheap Billy Ketchel, a vicious and resentful bully who keeps rehearsing his litany of injustices. I'd challenge any reader to come up with a single redeeming quality for this bloke. 

Looking back over the plot, it seems to me that Park uses some form of literary natural selection to weed out the more malevolent and negative influences from the Jerusalem, so that only the benign, loving, and harmless remain. And brace yourselves for a perfectly planned and executed revenge mission with a real Australian bite. It probably couldn't be done now, with our high-tech surveillance tools, but one character quietly does many others a colossal favor.  

The author blurb in this old edition reveals that Ruth Park, along with her husband, D'Arcy Niland, was forced to live in a Sydney slum tenement for a while, owing to the shortage of adequate housing following World War Two. Aha, no wonder her descriptions bear such a compassionate insider's touch. Park's writing is alchemical, spinning gold from straw. 

The ending brims with heartbreaking closures and exciting new beginnings. As for the title, we are rewarded by learning why 'a power of roses' is Uncle Puss's whole life philosophy all condensed into four words. 

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'This is not a book about Benedict Cumberbatch' by Tabitha Carvan

Summary: In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence...and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to, unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there's true, untapped power in finding your "thing" (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.

MY THOUGHTS:

It is the subtitle that attracted me to this book. What a quirky and timely read it is. And you don't have to even admire Benedict Cumberbatch to appreciate it. I, for one, haven't succumbed to his charm, but still wouldn't have missed reading this. 

Tabitha, a wife and mother  living in Canberra, describes how she discovered Benedict Cumberbatch when her children were small. 

'Something lurched into motion in the pit of my belly, that churning, squeezing madness for more that leaves you in no doubt why they call it a crush.'

Since then she's watched the Sherlock series and the Marvel movies many times over, along with every other starring role of her idol's. And her life became shinier, illuminated, and far more fun than ever before, although she was performing the same old roles in the home and workplace. 

The difference to her outlook was so remarkable that Tabitha Carvan took it upon herself to find the hideaways of others with similar stories to share. Although most of the women interviewed for this book are fellow 'Cumberbitches' our fannish 'thing' can be anything that lights us up in the same way. 

This book is first and foremost an enthusiastic and convincing defense of passionate fandoms; the liberation document we never realized we so badly need. It strikes such a chord with me, I know I'm among this book's target audience. You'll feel the same way, if the description fits. We are the people whose benign hobbies are sometimes denigrated and trivialized as time-wasting and unproductive, making us inclined to keep them intensely private. The Protestant Work Ethic has infiltrated our western culture in its insidious way until we feel sheepish at best and shamed at worst. Whoever would have imagined we'd need an earnest voice like Tabitha's to tell us the truth. The transforming pleasure we get from our fandoms and passions is all the justification we need! 

Quiet personal tragedies undoubtedly abound. Casualties of voluntary diminishment are surely everywhere. Those who heed the content of subtle yet powerful guilt trips will never know what fun they've missed. For the alternative of this vibrant, imaginative, switched-on life (in other words, not having a 'thing') does not feel bad but merely normal. Once about twenty years ago, a well-meaning friend of mine described how she'd switched off her vivid imagination for the sake of peace and contentment. I left her house in a sort of daze, thinking, 'Nope, too great a sacrifice. I could never do that.'

Fanfiction gets a good wrap-up in this book. As a keen fanfic author, I appreciate Tabitha's fondness for it. She has a wonderful analogy about a woman who discovered an entire hidden apartment behind her bathroom mirror. That's precisely how I felt when I thought I'd exhausted the mileage I could get from my beloved book series, then discovered these untapped masterpieces about the same favourite characters.

The statistics of Archive of Our Own (one of my second homes) proves that it is actually more like a teeming metropolis than an extra apartment. Yes, there will always be stigma from people likening fanfiction to paint-by-number art, or packaged cake mixes, or Elvis impersonators.  But those of us who are busy doing it know full well that derivative needn't mean unchallenging or un-fascinating.  

If there is one thing that occasionally irritates me about Tabitha's style, it's her exaggerated self-deprecation, since she is clearly a highly intelligent and successful person who has maintained a viral blog and an up-to-date career interviewing scientists for cutting-edge articles, not to mention getting this book deal. 'Why all the false modesty,' I kept wanting to ask her. Yet after awhile, this stopped bothering me since her ultimate message is so enjoyable and uniquely presented. 

As I often do, I read other reviews after forming the bones of mine. One man wrote a scathing, one-star review asking, 'When she's on her death bed, will she really think, "I'm glad I spent all that time thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch?"' 

I'm certain Tabitha would reply, 'Hell, yeah!' It was satisfying to see several commenters tell him, 'You've obviously missed the whole point of the book.' That reviewer was clearly just the sort of person who might stamp out our joy in his reasonable sounding, yet scornfully dismissive way. 

This is a happy-making book, fresh and colorful enough to dip into many times. I'm glad a fellow Aussie had the brainwave to give this subject the book-length coverage it deserves. 

(Oh, and by the way, I learned that many people producing fan art and fan fiction on the internet are women in their fifties. So there you go, I have many cohorts and didn't even know it.)

Note: If you'd like to read more about fanfic, or even read some of my own fanfic, then start here.

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'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson

Note: This was a book recommendation which I came across in another novel, often the best way of discovering new reading matter. Sometimes suggestions from fictional characters are worth following up even more than those from our real life friends. It happens that Jane Penderwick counts Finn Taverner, from this story, among her favorite imaginary book boyfriends. So when I spotted the spine at the secondhand shop, I thought I'd take my chance on it. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

 Although published in the early 21st century, this YA novel has real vintage, steampunk vibes. The story starts in 1910. Maia Fielding is an orphan who's being sent out to the Carter family, distant relatives of hers who live along the banks of the Amazon River in Brazil and operate a rubber plantation. She looks forward to meeting their identical twin daughters nearly her own age. Maia is accompanied by the resourceful Miss Minton, who's been engaged as governess for all three girls. 

Reality is a rude shock. It turns out Mrs Carter is a germ phobe who has transformed their home into a sterile bubble to keep out the tropical environment. Mr Carter is a creepy collector of glass eyes, and Beatrice and Gwendolyn's whole goal in life is to shun work and plague people. What's more, the Carter family has only agreed to take Maia under their roof in order to receive the financial benefits they'll be paid. 

But Maia befriends two boys who are in dire straits of their own. Finn Taverner is the son of a deceased naturalist. He's doing his best to dodge two private investigators who are determined to take him back to England to claim an inheritance he doesn't want. And poor, wistful Clovis King is a young itinerant actor traveling with a crooked troupe who exploits him. Clovis' nostalgia for England is unrelenting. (I quickly anticipated a possible plot of intentional mistaken identity, but the story delivers so much more than that. Deception is brilliant when everyone benefits, including the dupes.)

The novel is a tribute to the Amazon jungles and rainforests, and the mighty river which sometimes seems to swell to the size of the sea itself. (Hence its title.) The pages are bulging with capuchin monkeys, manatees, alligators, sloths, umbrella birds and many other colorful critters. Yet Ibbotson provides a balanced view that it is not everyone's cup of tea. Clovis' hankering for British rainstorms, bread-and-butter puddings, and village greens is equally convincing. 

A highlight for me is the influence of Miss Minton, governess extraordinaire, whose quiet, behind-the-scenes wisdom and manipulations are pure gold. She prioritizes spending her salary on excellent books, at the expense of her threadbare wardrobe and sparse personal effects. ('If you want something badly enough, you usually get it. But you have to take what goes along with it.')

Ibbotson's droll descriptions get my thumbs-up too. Those poor detectives, Mr Trapwood and Mr Low. 'Both their stomachs had become boiling caverns of agony and wind.' And the Carter twins are described as, 'pale insect grubs who exist only to be fed and groomed by others.'

So overall, Miss Minton's words hold true. 'Whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage and an open mind may find themselves in Paradise.' Yet at the same time, there exists a geographical and lifestyle sweet spot for every one of us, which we owe it to ourselves to discover if we possibly can. 

I'm willing to track down more of Ibbotson's YA books on the basis of this one. 

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'Daphne' by Justine Picardie

Summary: It is 1957. The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the character in her most famous novel, written 20 years earlier. Seeking distraction, she begins to research a biography of Branwell Bronte.

MY THOUGHTS:

This well-researched novel was loads of fun to read. It is not a fictionalized biography of Daphne du Maurier's whole life, but focuses on a specific block of time, beginning when she is already fifty years old. And only one third of the novel is told from Daphne's own point of view. The other two thirds deal with two other characters, which I found a most creative way of tackling it. 

First thread begins in 1957 and focuses on Daphne herself. The popular novelist receives a whopping blow when her husband of almost 25 years, Lt. General Sir Frederick Browning, is admitted to hospital for mental breakdown treatment and she also discovers he's been having an affair. Devastated Daphne takes refuge from emotional pain in her current writing project, a biography of Branwell Bronte. She decides this red-haired wastrel may well be her lifeline. Daphne extends feelers by writing to a stranger, J. Alexander Symington requesting any help he may give her. She has heard he is a librarian, archivist and keen Bronte scholar.

The second thread covers Alex Symington's perspective. Although he'd initially love to snub Daphne, (for if anyone was to write a book on Branwell Bronte it should be himself, not a romantic lady novelist who knew nothing of scholarly research), he is impressed by her fame and reputation. 

However, Symington hides a dark secret. He was dismissed by his former employers for thievery. His sticky fingers purloined several valuable documents, including irreplaceable Bronte original writings. Symington adroitly hedges around this disgrace in his correspondence with Daphne, hoping that she'll never twig. He's a sad and seedy little man creeping amongst his stacks of hoarded papers, also trying to dodge the demands of his exasperated wife.  

The third thread jumps forward to modern times. A shy young woman plans to write a proposal for her PhD thesis on the Brontes' imaginary worlds, yet she's keen to incorporate Daphne du Maurier and whatever she can discover about her correspondence with Alex Symington.

This girl never divulges her name, at least not until the very end. She is married to Paul, a smug and breezy English lecturer who is twice her age. The specter of Paul's perfect first wife, Rachel, hangs over their home. (Does this begin to sound familiar?) However, unlike the infamous Rebecca, Paul's ex-wife is still alive. She is a gorgeous and celebrated poet, darling of the literary world. 

Nothing the insecure young heroine may do in the academic world will ever hold a candle to anything Rachel produces. What's more, the girl admits to herself that she was initially swept away by Paul's sex appeal because he reminded her of Heathcliff, Rochester, and Maxim de Winter all rolled into one. But it is becoming clear that they might have been too hasty to tie the knot. Paul was on the rebound and she was intent on building herself a life that might live up to her beloved Bronte and du Maurier novels. 

This novel reminds me of all the academic snobbery and pomposity I encountered in the English department as a youngster during my undergraduate degree. Paul is not at all happy for his wife to include Daphne du Maurier in her planned dissertation, for he considers her far too minor a figure in twentieth century literature to bother with. In his eyes, Daphne was merely popular, but undistinguished. 'Irrelevant to the proper study of English literature!' Oho! 'Although Paul turns out to have a more personal reason for his antipathy to Du Maurier's body of work, many of his faculty buddies agree with him. 

In actual fact, Du Maurier's whole extended family were quite illustrious. I'm now intrigued to find out more about her five cousins, the Llewelyn Davies boys, who were adopted by James Matthew Barrie and became his role models for Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. 

At the heart of the story, however, is the long distance friendship based on deception. I grabbed my copy of The Infernal World, and sure enough, there was Daphne's dedication to Symington, written while she still had no idea he was a crook.

'To J. Alex Symington, compiler and editor of The Shakespeare Head Bronte, whose life-long interest in Patrick Branwell Bronte stimulated my own, and encouraged me to undertake the present study.' 

Perhaps the scandal which is exposed in this book explains why Alex Symington has no Wiki Page devoted to him, although a couple of articles about his dodgy shenanigans popped up. Yet after all his subterfuge, poor old Symington couldn't take a single one of those documents with him, could he?

This is a wonderful homage to celebrated British writers with more interesting tidbits of info packed into it than I can even cover in this review. A real springboard for further reading. According to this book, Daphne du Maurier has a personal diary locked away in a bank vault, with strict instructions not to be opened and released until 50 years after her death. Well, that sad event occurred in 1989, so by 2039, there will be another fascinating release for du Maurier fans to look out for.   

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Check out my review of Daphne's impressive achievement, The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.