Villette

This was quite a fascinating book. I loved it at the beginning and then had a really hard time getting through the second half. Brontë's language is beautiful, her narrative voice did some magic on me. There was a scene where the protagonist of the book, Lucy Snowe, catches and secretly watches her employer, Madame Beck, slowly and very very meticulously go through her belongings. Reading this nearly gave me an ASMR experience!

The novel partially feels like an experiment to Brontë. Her narrator is unreliable, omitting or concealing details, mainly about her own feelings. It takes a while for you to figure this out, but once you do, you got to admire it. What made it then hard to plough through is that the narrator meanders quite a bit in the second half, dropping characters and story lines or goes off on tangents about church and human nature.

What I also loved was the mixing of French dialogue into the English. Not enough to annoy a non-French speaker, but more than you would think. The life-like and intimate portrayal of the characters was also quite perfect. Brontë has a good eye and gave Lucy a good eye too. I especially felt the characterization and the teasing relationship between Lucy and Ginevra Fanshawe highly entertaining.