Jane Steele

Author/Guide: Lyndsay Faye

Why a Booktrail?

Think you know the story of Jane Eyre? Well this is Jane Steele – the kick ass, gritty, murderous version….

ISBN: 978-1472217554
Genre: Historical

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Jane Steele shares a lot with the heroine of the novel she adores. She has an aunt who delights in tormenting her and a schoolmaster who carries on the torment. She is made out to be the wicked one at the school and is made an example of. Jane starts to worry that this might be true and so flees the school. She leaves her torments dead however – and so starts the story of Jane Steele.
Now in London, Jane answers an advert for a job at Highgate House for Mr Thornfield. There is something very strange about her new home, secrets in its walls, and something very wrong in its basement..

Locations

Reset

Travel Guide

Lowan Bridge School,—shire

The early torment years at Lowan Bridge School with the imaginatively named Mr Munt.

As with the original Jane Eyre, those early years show how an aunt and a school can form a steely character to protect against the abuse and torment Jane receives from an aunt and her school master. Jane Eyre is her confidant in a book and she looks to her for guidance and inspiration of a mindset on how to deal with the role of women, female oppression, education and sex.

London

On arrival in London, Jane is little more than a fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, trying to do what she must to right some wrongs.

Highgate House in —–shire as was the way fictional settings were written of in Jane Eyre’s time has a secret at its core. There is something not in the attic but in the basement. Mr Thornfield (note the name) is a former doctor in the army and has recently returned from the Sikh Wars. Also in the house is a Sikh butler Mr Singh whose relationship with Mr Thornfield is dark and deep. Jane brings the secret of murder to the mix.

The house is dark and dreary. When she first tours the house and finds the basement out of bounds, she remembers how Jane Eyre heard the eerie laugh of Grace Poole and chills start to whisper around her.

Gothic in tone and substance with a ward by the name of Sahjara – exotic and elegant in equal measure. Other staff in the house are Sikhs too and they show a unique side into not only Sikhism but into the East India Company, its history and perhaps one of the great mysteries of the time.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

I love Jane Eyre. Love it. One of the best classics of all time really. So I was a bit apprehensive to read this. Having said that I had read Lyndsay Faye’s other novels and was blown away so I had faith that this was not going to be a Jane Eyre with attitude novel. I was not disappointed as this was so much more. SO much more.

Lyndsay not only evokes and alludes to the time of Jane Eyre and to the story but fully immerses you inside that world and in the minds of both Janes – Eyre and Steele. The novel follows the story of Jane Eyre in as much as the move from school to governess but the real link is how Steele uses the novel as some sort of spiritual guidance. Whilst drinking gin and killing people of course. Although not always on purpose.

The writing is quite genius and I don’t use the world lightly. She only does what she needs to do in order to survive. Life of the two Janes may have parallels but this is no Jane Eyre mark 2. This Jane’s life goes off on one tangent after another.

‘Reader I murdered him’ may be the best line ever in a novel. It not only reminds you of the original novel but shows the wit and satire of this story. It’s a romance, a victorian satirical romance, evocative in tone, nature and language and the way it changes from Jane’s story to one immerses in Sikh history and intrigue was nothing short of genius.

I really can’t say too much more without giving some of the plot away but cast your doubts aside and welcome Jane Steele into your home – steele by name and steele by nature.