The Brown Brontë

Dear readers, I'm so excited today to be able to host Jean Kwok's haunting novel Searching For Sylvie Lee, as it journeys through our book blogs on its blog tour. In honour of that, check out my review now, When Still Waters Run Deep: Searching For Sylvie Lee , or click the link at the end of this post. But that's not all. I'm also thrilled to be able to share with you a special author Q&A with the amazing Jean Kwok herself. Her answers were so thoughtful, and I found myself nodding in agreement to lots of them. So without further ado, here it is: Q:  Which authors have influenced you the most?  A: There are so many wonderful writers, like Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguru, Italo Calvino and Maxine Hong Kingston who have inspired me. I particularly love Atwood’s gorgeous use of language, her ability to make the pages fly and her wild creative freedom.  Q:  What’s a book you read when you were younger that has stayed with you? A: As a working c

The commercialism of Valentine’s Day means it’s always full of some pretty big clich é s: hearts, flowers, sickly sweet chocolate. Romantic relationships in books and movies are often no exception and can sometimes feel predictable and formulaic.   So for this Valentine’s Day post I’m going to look at some depictions of love in books that are not your run-of-the-mills-and-boon romances, and some examples of love that are not at all romantic. 1.        Lucy Snow and M. Paul, Villette:   It wouldn’t be a Brown Bront ë post without featuring a Bront ë book! Villette is not what you’d call a romance or love story. Shy young Lucy Snowe and the clever and volatile Monsieur Paul Emmanuel don’t seem like the likeliest of pairings, but there is some sort of affinity that draws them together. The interactions between them are sometimes comical, sometimes frustrating, with flashes of sweetness. Bront ë also plays with our expectations in this novel. We think the relationship be