About Book Tastings:
In a book tasting, we read only the opening 25 pages of a book. We’ll tell how the book begins and then say whether those pages inspired us to continue reading the book. A book tasting is not a book review; it doesn’t evaluate the entire book. (For more about Book Tastings, click here)
My Brother’s Keeper is a fictionalized book featuring English literature’s famous Brontë family in the village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, England.
The prologue takes place in the Brontë children’s past. A young teenage Branwell comes into the kitchen where he tells his younger sisters about his dream where he saw their dead older sister Maria at the crag called Ponden Kirk, which lies beyond the parsonage and into the moors. He then insists that his younger sisters Anne and Emily accompany him there that very day. At Ponden Kirk, the three do a ritual where they slice their hands with a knife and mix their blood on the rock. Branwell believes that act will bring back their dead sister Maria. But it doesn’t, so they go home to tell their older sister Charlotte about their adventure.
Chapter One begins years later with 27-year-old Emily feeling drawn to Ponden Kirk again. She takes her dog Keeper with her. There she finds a wounded man with a patch over one eye who reveals nothing about himself or his serious deadly wounds. Emily runs to the nearest neighbor for help, and a memory from seven years ago crosses her mind. A huge weird looking dog had bitten the back of her hand, leaving a strange scar. When Emily and her neighbors get back to Ponden Kirk, the wounded stranger has gone. But he left without his bloodied double-bladed knife that Emily decides to secretly pick up and put in her pocket.
Emily shows her siblings and father the knife when she returns home, telling them about her adventure. Mr. Brontë knows what the wounded man looked like before Emily could describe him. Branwell remembered the first time he saw a double-bladed knife, when he was coerced into participating in a weird “baptism.”
It was 10 years ago when Branwell was drunk and met a Reverend Farfleece who asked Branwell about the scar on the back of his hand. Branwell’s scar, just like Emily’s, was from the bite a large malformed dog. Rev. Farfleece tells Branwell he must go through a special baptism to protect himself from that evil dog-like creature. Branwell follows Farfleece to a church where he meets a woman holding the double-bladed knife, which Branwell knows must be part of this baptism. All this he keeps secret from his family.
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I’m intrigued with this alternate reality novel where Tim Powers pulls historical information about the Brontë family and then recreates storyline around those facts, taking it into a different genre altogether. My only issues with continuing this novel are twofold. First, within the first twenty-five pages the storyline jumps from one age of the characters to other ages, introducing backstory. Emily is around twelve and her brother is one year older. Then we read about Anne being 6, but wait, that was 4 years earlier, which makes her 10? Switch then to an older Emily, but then we read about when she was four years younger than that. Then something happened when Branwell was 18 but now Emily is 27. You get the picture.
The second issue is with Branwell. His character is one of idleness filled with social anxiety, where he worries a lot about what people think of him. His actions have the opposite effect from what he’d like, which makes him look foolish rather than in charge of his life. It’s tough to read his story.
Still, I’m enjoying this book, mostly the storyline that follows Emily. Tim Powers has a way with words that pulls me into the story and vividly lets me visualize in detail. I will continue reading this book, and I’m looking forward to reading about the different elements that might come forth in the next pages. The gothic looking cover art makes me think Tim Powers will enter the horror genre.
Powers usually writes science fiction and fantasy, so I expect more crazy plots and twists for the remaining pages with some weird fantastical or alternate reality elements.
Book Tasting post by Jackie Sachen Turner
