"I Had a Very Severe Stepmother"

Elizabeth Floyd Mair interviews Scottish author Margot Livesey (who visits tomorrow) in the Times Union:

Q: What has the book Jane Eyre meant to you, and how is it connected to "The Flight of Gemma Hardy?"

A: I read Jane Eyre precociously when I was 9 years old. I pulled it out of my father's bookshelf, because it had a girl's name on the cover. And then, of course, it turned out to be about someone who was just about my age, and that was very appealing.

At the time, I was living with my father and stepmother on the grounds of the boys' school where my father taught in the Scottish Highlands. I could see the moors outside our living room window, and the school itself was a Gothic building with battlements that I could easily imagine as Thornfield Hall. I had a very severe stepmother, and it wasn't hard to turn her into Jane's aunt. Then, the year after I read the book, we moved to the south of Scotland, and I went to a very difficult boarding school. More.

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More Than a Match for Jane Eyre

Writing in The Daily Beast, Jane Ciabattari names Margot Livesey's new book a "Must Read."

Livesey visits Tuesday, March 20.

"Reinventing a beloved classic is a risky business, but it will come as no surprise to Margot Livesey’s admirers—a small but fervent group likely to be greatly enlarged by her wonderful new novel—that this abundantly gifted writer is more than a match for Jane Eyre. It’s not necessary to have read Charlotte Brontë’s protofeminist masterpiece to enjoy The Flight of Gemma Hardy, which works splendidly on its own terms, but the resonances and dissonances between these two compelling works enrich our appreciation of both." More.

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