Product Description

The new top ten bestselling novel from the much loved author of Girl with a Pearl Earring Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's new novel 'Burning Bright' sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works. Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16931 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for 'Burning Bright': 'A visual delight. Chevalier's meticulous brushstrokes allow us to hear the "youthful harlot's curse" and feel "the damp souls of housemaids"' The Times 'Burning Bright is an ambitious, impressively-researched novel!You can almost smell the smoke and mildewed clothes, see the gaunt, pock-marked faces of people struggling to survive and sense Jem's wonder as he gazes across the murky Thames to a perplexing world' Daily Express 'A subtle clarity of style, quirky but seldom over-drawn characters, engaging touches of domestic detail and a splendidly vital recreation of Georgian London' Sunday Times 'Vivid, romantic and pacey' Daily Mail 'Those who admired Chevalier's atmospheric evocation of 17th-century Delft will find much to enjoy in her vivid reconstruction of late 18th-century London' Guardian More praise for 'Burning Bright': 'Marvellously plotted!Chevalier masterfully works the themes and images of Blake's poetry into a tale of pure souls "burning bright" in a tarnished, slippery world' Susan Vreeland, Waterstone's Books Quarterly 'Her pen-sketches of the squalor, smells and sounds of low-life London flesh out the history into immediacy' Financial Times 'Entertaining and involving' Literary Review 'Chevalier's characteristic love of detail - from the smells of the cattle market to a grotesque description of a man eating a pie - brings Georgian London vividly to life, while meticulous research allows her to weave fact and fiction into a convincing and persuasive narrative' Irish Times 'Great pleasure is derived from Chevalier's vivid sense of place. In her hands, late 18th-century London and Lambeth in particular spring to life, and you see a city teetering on the brink of the rapid expansion and industrialisation that is about to change it forever' Historical Novels Review

From the Author
THE INSPIRATION: In early 2001 I went to an exhibition of
William Blake's works at Tate Britain in London. This sprawling display
explored the many and varied strands of Blake's life: his paintings,
commercial engravings, books he printed and coloured, illustrated poems,
and prose and letters describing his radical thinking and bohemian world.

I was familiar with Blake's poems from studying them at college, and his
art from a semester I spent studying in London, but I had never seen it all
pulled together. I remember standing in the middle of one of the rooms,
bewildered by the variety and intensity of his work, and thinking, "This
guy was crazy, or on drugs, or both." At the end of the exhibition, I went
into the shop and bought a notebook with a Blake image on the cover,
thinking, "This is the notebook I will use for my Blake novel some day."
Two and a half years later, I opened that notebook and began taking notes.

I spent a whole year reading about Blake and looking at his work before I
began the novel itself. There is so much written about him it's kind of
ridiculous, and confusing. I think Blake is a bit of a mirror - hold him up
to yourself and you will see reflected in him your own interests and
preoccupations. Poetry, art, philosophy, theology, erotica, politics,
socio-economics: it's all there if you choose to look for it.

Blake's work is not easy to cope with. Much of his poetry is long,
personal, and obscure. His illustrations are dark and anxious. By the end
of the year I didn't understand him any better than I had at the start -
though I did at least come to realize that he was neither crazy nor on
drugs. I kept looking for that one work that would explain him to me, but
after a while I realized I was going to have to write it myself.

The works I kept coming back to were his two volumes, Songs of Innocence
and of Experience - short, simple poems I had always loved and felt I sort
of understood. I decided then that I would focus on Blake's writing of
Songs of Experience - to me the acquiring of experience contains more of a
story than being in a state of innocence. The story of Adam and Eve is
interesting because they tasted the apple, after all; otherwise there is no
story.

Speaking of Adam and Eve, I also kept circling back to a story told about
Blake and his wife Catherine. Supposedly their friend Thomas Butts visited
them in Lambeth and found them sitting naked in their garden, reading
Milton's Paradise Lost to each other. Blake is meant to have said, "Oh,
don't mind us - it's only Adam and Eve, you know!" Scholars dismiss the
story as unlikely, but I love it, as it humanizes Blake. It also made me
wonder what it was like to be his neighbor. So I put that together with
Songs of Experience and came up with Burning Bright.

About the Author
Tracy Chevalier is the author of four previous novels, including the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, and The Lady and the Unicorn. Born in Washington, DC, she moved in 1984 to London, where she lives with her husband and son. She has a website at www.tchevalier.com.

Customer Reviews

Interesting historically, but not the most gripping story.
An interesting and detailed picture of London in the late eighteenth century. The people and the industries of the time, along with the feeling of unrest as King George worries that his citizens will revolt like the French.

It took me a little while to get into the story, possibly because I wasn't particularly interested in the circus or the Astleys who owned it. I found it a little poor but it did improve and as the story developed I did grow to like Jem and Maggie, the main characters.

I would disagree with the synopsis that states, "Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour...William Blake." They hardly become entangled. He's a printer, a radical and poet who just happens to be a neighbour and features briefly from time to time to give them a little food for thought.

Pleasant, but not gripping.

A Nice Book
This was a good read, a good tale, but nothing exciting. It told you little bits about William Blake, but I do not feel like a Blake connoisseur having read this! The book tells of a family moving from Dorsetshire to London in 1792, which would probably ring true with anyone making a similar move today. The family live next door to William Blake, and occasionally their paths cross. I loved 'Girl with a Pearl Earring,' it made me seek out Vermeer's work, and look with renewed vigour at Dutch painting. This book simply does not enthuse you with any similar passion.

Sadly, not her best.
I have been a huge fan of Chevalier for a number of years now and absolutely love "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "Falling Angels". (I'd recommend them in an instant!) When I heard that she was writing a new book (after about four years of no new publications) I couldn't wait to get hold of it, let alone read it.

To summise, the novel revolves arounds the Kellaway family, who move from rural Dorset to late 18th-century London, where they happen to become neighbours with William Blake. The son, Jem Kellaway starts work at a circus and makes friends with Maggie Butterfield. It is very much a tale of their friendship and their relationship with the Blakes.

On the surface, there isn't anything wrong with plot and it's not badly written. However, for me, it was missing something; I think it lacked passion - in her others novels, I have always felt that she enjoyed writing the books and developing the characters/plotlines. In this one, it didn't feel like Chevalier. In addition, one of the reasons why I like Chevalier is that her work doesn't come across as predictable, but in 'Burning Bright' there were one or two subplots (a pregnancy, for example) that were completely unnecessary. When that pregnancy occurred, I was almost screaming 'No!' because I just hoped it wasn't going to be that predictable. If anything, these episodes felt very contrived in order to take the reader from one phase to the next.

I am going to make a large presumption here but it crossed my mind that Chevalier had written the book simply because she hadn't had anything published in a while; almost as if to bring her back on the scene.

Would I recommend it? To be honest, I'd hesitate. If you like Chevalier, then at least read it, but have no expectations. If you have never read Chevalier before, DON'T start with this one.