Book Review: "Mr. Rochester's Ghost" by Lindsay Marcott

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte appears at number 14 on my list of my '25 favourite books' of all time and is one of those books which I consider to be truly timeless. It will never go out of style, out of print or go out of mind. It is truly art. I read Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea when I was about seventeen and I'm not going to lie - at first I didn't like it all that much but as I read it again, I started to appreciate it. It was like learning a new language - you don't really get the hang of it at first, but the more intensely you read on it, the better it gets. Wide Sargasso Sea in comparison to Jane Eyre is an entirely different language, yet one does not take away from the other.

There have been many books written as 'modern' versions of Jane Eyre and many of them, I must admit, are terrible. They have no story, they concentrate too much on the wrong things or they don't understand the essence of Jane as a character. I found this only partially true for Lindsay Marcott's attempt entitled: Mrs. Rochester's Ghost.

The structure seemed well done enough with a gripping opening which sets up the rest of the story, but if you were looking for a book that was inspired by Jane Eyre then you would be confused as hell as to how this represents the famed novel by Charlotte Bronte. Rochester seems to be a lazily or hastily written character in which he is given the prime features of the dark and brooding anti-hero, but nothing below the surface. He is a character who is flawed yes, but there is nothing you can sink your teeth into. However, I did think that this was a good attempt at shining a light on to Rochester's flaws which make you really think about why Jane bothered to marry him in the original text. A good exploration which could have been a lot longer than it was, Rochester is a character that never really goes away if done in-depth enough.

As for Jane I think there was a lot of room for improvement. The character was not really how I remember her in the book. In the original novel, Jane is known for her neatness, her smart ways, her faithfulness and her all around goodness. She is an incredible human being and has a calm, almost moving way about her with her aura being a woman who cannot be contained within a confined space. She doesn't make herself hear by simply talking loudly, but her actions reflect that of a good person. In this book by Lindsay Marcott, Jane is messy, she is all over the place and morally, she is questionable at times. This is not really the Jane I had in mind from when I first looked at this book but there is something I do understand about it. This book is primarily about Mr. Rochester and not about Jane, so I can understand the Jane character being changed slightly to represent a more of a binary opposition to the character of Rochester portrayed in this novel - which is how they are represented in the original text.

In conclusion, though I personally did not fully enjoy this novel - I do understand why the author made the decisions they did in terms of character.