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Published Jan 2012
464 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A captivating tale, set in Scotland in the early 1960s, that is both an homage to and a modern variation on the enduring classic Jane Eyre. Fate has not been kind to Gemma Hardy. Orphaned by the age of ten, neglected by a bitter and cruel aunt, sent to a boarding school where she is both servant and student, young Gemma seems destined for a life of hardship and loneliness. Yet her bright spirit burns strong. Fiercely intelligent, singularly determined, Gemma overcomes each challenge and setback, growing stronger and more certain of her path. Now an independent young woman with dreams of the future, she accepts a position as an au pair on the remote and beautiful Orkney Islands. But Gemma's biggest trial is about to begin... a journey of passion and betrayal, secrets and lies, redemption and discovery, that will lead her to a life she's never dreamed of.
BookBrowse Review
"Reader, I wanted to love this retelling of Jane Eyre set in the 1960s, but aside from some appealing descriptions of the remote Orkney Islands and a rustic Icelandic village, The Flight of Gemma Hardy offers only sluggish pacing, a lackluster romance, and most unforgivably, a heroine whose alleged pluck instead comes across as self-righteousness. Characters enter and exit as the plot requires, seldom creating strong enough impressions to sustain readers' attention or win their hearts. In 1966, Jean Rhys reinterpreted Bronte's novel as the innovative and haunting Wide Sargasso Sea; Margot Livesey is content to serve up a tepid cup of tea instead of a new take on the original's bracing brew." - Marnie Colton
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Captivating and moving, this book is a wonderful addition to Livesey's body of work." - Publishers Weekly
"This original slant on a classic story line captures the reader's interest and sustains it to the end. Fans of modern interpretations of the classics will particularly enjoy." - Library Journal
"Nicely, touchingly done, and the familiar story exerts its reliably magnetic pull, but fans of Jane Eyre will wonder why." - Kirkus Reveiws
"In The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey offers a new telling of Jane Eyre, for which no contemporary writer is better suited. As always, Livesey's prose is a garden of pleasures: precision here, lyricism there, wit and compassionate insight throughout." - Amy Bloom, author of Away
"The writing is at once wholehearted and razor sharp, but here as in all of Livesey's novels, the real treasure is her gift for exploring the unreduced human psyche with all its radiant contradictions, mercurial insights, and desperate generosities. Gemma is real - it's as simple as that. And through her eyes we see step-by-step what it means to stay determined in the face of the world's ceaseless ambiguities - what it means, in other words, to take possession of one's own life." - David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
"[T]horoughly engaging and bracingly unsentimental. The prose is meticulous, the tale transporting. Trust me, you will love this book." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wit's End
This information about The Flight of Gemma Hardy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Marion Ettlinger
Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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