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I'd been saving up Rose Lerner's The Wife in the Attic for a long trip out of a feeling that it would be a perfect plane read, as indeed it very much was.
The pitch for The Wife in the Attic is 'lesbian Gothic Jane Eyre'. I did not know, but probably should have expected given Lerner's narrative interests, that it would be, specifically, Jewish lesbian Gothic Jane Eyre; when the impoverished, middle-aged heroine accepts a classic Gothic position as a governess in an isolated manor to instruct young Tabby Palethorpe in various respectable subjects and good Christian values, one of the secrets she's very careful to keep from her charming new employer is her half-Jewish heritage.
The main tension in the plot is the shifting balance of power and trust between the heroine, the aforementioned charming new employer, and his near-invisible and ambiguously foreign wife, who suffers from a mysterious 'illness' and seems to play no part in her own child's life. Both Palethorpes have a very particular version of reality that they'd like their new governess to believe -- and though our heroine, very unaccustomed to being of importance to anyone, initially finds all the attention a little seductive, it all very soon begins to take on an increasingly sinister element.
The first-person heroine has a name, by the way, but I kept forgetting that fact and wanting to refer to her by 'I' or 'B-ko' like the heroine of Rebecca -- actually I think the structural problem of the book for me sort of comes down to the fact that the book as written feels more like it wants to be wading through the murkier waters of Rebecca than Jane Eyre, and end with more messy third-act ambiguity to match the really successful tension and unease that's building through the rest of the book.
( More discussion of the ending and the battle between romance and Gothic )
Anyway, I can imagine a book that would land better but all that said I'm glad it's the book that it is and that all the weirdness and tension and discomfort was allowed to stay in there rather than sanding off the edges off either the protagonist or Lady Palethorpe -- it's not a perfect book but it is a tremendously interesting book. (Also shout-outs to Rose Lerner for both writing a kid whom the protagonist cares about deeply while also finding her annoying and difficult most of the time, and for remembering always that lower servants in the house have a viewpoint and that viewpoint is very likely to be judgmental for good reasons.)
The pitch for The Wife in the Attic is 'lesbian Gothic Jane Eyre'. I did not know, but probably should have expected given Lerner's narrative interests, that it would be, specifically, Jewish lesbian Gothic Jane Eyre; when the impoverished, middle-aged heroine accepts a classic Gothic position as a governess in an isolated manor to instruct young Tabby Palethorpe in various respectable subjects and good Christian values, one of the secrets she's very careful to keep from her charming new employer is her half-Jewish heritage.
The main tension in the plot is the shifting balance of power and trust between the heroine, the aforementioned charming new employer, and his near-invisible and ambiguously foreign wife, who suffers from a mysterious 'illness' and seems to play no part in her own child's life. Both Palethorpes have a very particular version of reality that they'd like their new governess to believe -- and though our heroine, very unaccustomed to being of importance to anyone, initially finds all the attention a little seductive, it all very soon begins to take on an increasingly sinister element.
The first-person heroine has a name, by the way, but I kept forgetting that fact and wanting to refer to her by 'I' or 'B-ko' like the heroine of Rebecca -- actually I think the structural problem of the book for me sort of comes down to the fact that the book as written feels more like it wants to be wading through the murkier waters of Rebecca than Jane Eyre, and end with more messy third-act ambiguity to match the really successful tension and unease that's building through the rest of the book.
( More discussion of the ending and the battle between romance and Gothic )
Anyway, I can imagine a book that would land better but all that said I'm glad it's the book that it is and that all the weirdness and tension and discomfort was allowed to stay in there rather than sanding off the edges off either the protagonist or Lady Palethorpe -- it's not a perfect book but it is a tremendously interesting book. (Also shout-outs to Rose Lerner for both writing a kid whom the protagonist cares about deeply while also finding her annoying and difficult most of the time, and for remembering always that lower servants in the house have a viewpoint and that viewpoint is very likely to be judgmental for good reasons.)