Villette

Not what I wanted it to be, but for all the reasons it's interesting. The main character, who writes the story, is the most side character of all, yet with no actual access to the details around her until after the fact.

It does make the last half the really interesting pay off for the first half. And while it is slightly better than Emily's Wuthering Heights by virtue of Charlotte's writing style it is painfully similar in characterisation and pathological run on excuses for laying down and getting shafted by life as a Christian virtue (and the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is wrung out to excess in this one).

I loved it but I'm traumatized by the feeling that Charlotte Bronte does not like Lucy Snow. In contrast, I love Lucy Snow with all her little stiff curmudgeonly ways. So what does that say about me? And what does that say about whether I would like Charlotte Bronte, that I side with her fictional antihero over her?