BECOMING JANE EYRE

Jen Taylor offers a strong reading of Kohler’s parallel autobiographies of Charlotte Brontë and her most famous creation, Jane Eyre. Listeners enter the Brontë world, following Charlotte and her sisters, Anne and Emily, as they walk through parlor and park, reading to one another from their respective novels and poetry, giving each other ideas and criticism, coping with their jealousies, broken love affairs, health issues, their brother Branwell’s dissipation, and their father’s recovery from near blindness. Taylor uses a lush, throaty voice for her narration while creating an impressive range of voices for the dialogue and characterizations. Even high-pitched children’s voices become credible in her skilled performance. This is an intriguing fictionalized look at how much of a writer’s life sometimes makes its way into her novels. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2011]