Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Brightly Burning
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://alexadonne.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017066645
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017066645
HEADING: Donne, Alexa
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Boston University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Works in international television marketing. Has worked variously as a fan convention organizer, teen mentor, college admissions essay consultant, and as a podcaster.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Alexa Donne is a writer of science fiction and fantasy for teens. She graduated from Boston University and moved across country to Los Angeles. Over the years, Donne has worked variously as a fan convention organizer, teen mentor, college admissions essay consultant, and as a podcaster.
Donne published the novel Brightly Burning in 2018, a retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with a feminist slant to it. Humans populate spaceships that orbit Earth while waiting out an ice age on the planet below. Seventeen-year-old Stella Ainsley is thrilled to learn that she has been accepted to become a governess aboard the spaceship Rochester, allowing her to leave her engineering position on the old and rundown Stalwart. Working as a governess is her dream job. However, as she attempts to adapt to life aboard the Rochester, she finds that it and its inhabitants have many secrets. Nineteen-year-old Captain Hugo Fairfax catches her attention immediately due to his good looks and fortune. She falls head-over-heels in love with him, only to be jarred by the ship’s dark history. She must then decide to follow her heart or follow her conscience. Stella must also deal with the inequalities and class oppression that plague the culture on the ship.
In an interview in Horn Book, Donne talked with Roger Sutton about her fears and reservations about writing a book that merged Jane Eyre with a space opera. She shared that she “sat on this project for about two years because I wasn’t sure that I could do it justice. At first I thought I would have to write a pretty book, to write like Charlotte Brontë, who I can’t hold a candle to. I also wasn’t sure how to make changes that would work for contemporary YA, because you can’t have a contemporary YA novel with a love interest in his forties. Everyone brings their own expectations to a retelling of a beloved classic: ‘It’s not a Jane Eyre retelling without X.’” Donne insisted: “I had to make my own choices and follow my gut. I hope that people love it, but honestly, if Jane Eyre fans don’t like something I changed or a direction I took, I understand.” However, Donne did not approach Jane Eyre uncritically when incorporating aspects of it into Brightly Burning. She asserted in the Horn Book interview: “I definitely wanted to change the “crazy wife in the attic” trope. I know that is such an important part of Jane Eyre, but I’ve never liked how Bertha is painted.”
Writing on the Young Folks website, Deborah Krieger observed that “the story kicks into gear when Stella arrives on the Rochester and meets Hugo Fairfax, the brooding, mercurial nineteen-year-old captain born into wealth and privilege. The heat and spark of this central romance is conveyed through Stella’s self-conscious, but increasingly determined interior monologue. Much like Twilight’s Edward Cullen, Brightly Burning’s Hugo Fairfax is not meant for me, but for the young adults who will be reading the book.” Krieger lamented: “Unfortunately, since Brightly Burning really doesn’t start until Stella leaves the Stalwart, we don’t get the same depth of story that Jane does in Jane Eyre; the story is less about Stella Ainsley growing up and coming into her own, but about Stella-and-Hugo’s star-crossed romance.”
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found the novel to be “a gripping examination of class, romance, and survival set in a dystopian future that feels chillingly relevant to our present times.” A contributor to the Rhapsody in Books blog commented that “this light and entertaining book will please fans of Jane Eyre, especially those who can accept this romance set among the stars instead of on the moors.” A contributor to the Children’s Book Review called Donne “a talented writer with a knack for setting and just the right amount of humor,” adding that Brightly Burning is “a joy to read, and it left me wanting a second book from Stella and Hugo.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Hollywood Reporter, November 29, 2017, Andy Lewis and Rebecca Ford, “Rights Available! Hot New Books with Hollywood Appeal,” p. 30.
Horn Book, May 10, 2018, Roger Sutton, “Alexa Doone Talks with Roger.”
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2018, review of Brightly Burning.
ONLINE
Alexa Doone website, http://alexadonne.com (July 25, 2018).
Children’s Book Review, https://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/ (May 1, 2018), review of Brightly Burning.
Rhapsody in Books blog, https://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/ (May 21, 2018), review of Brightly Burning.
Young Folks, https://www.theyoungfolks.com/ (July 3, 2018), Deborah Krieger, review of Brightly Burning.
ALEXA DONNE
Alexa Donne is a Ravenclaw who wears many hats, including fan convention organizing, teen mentoring, college admissions essay consulting, YouTube-ing and podcasting. When she’s not writing science fiction and fantasy for teens, Alexa works in international television marketing. A proud Boston University Terrier, she lives in Los Angeles with two fluffy ginger cats named after YA literature characters. Brightly Burning is her debut novel.
Alexa is represented by Elana Roth-Parker of Laura Dail Literary Agency.
For a full press kit, including a longer bio, see HERE.
Alexa Donne is a Ravenclaw who wears many hats, including fan convention organizing, teen mentoring, college admissions essay consulting, YouTube-ing and podcasting. When she's not writing science fiction and fantasy for teens, Alexa works in international television marketing. A proud Boston University Terrier, she lives in Los Angeles with two fluffy ginger cats named after YA literature characters. Visit her at www.alexadonne.com.
Alexa Donne Talks with Roger
May 10, 2018 by Roger Sutton Leave a Comment
Talks with Roger is a sponsored supplement to our free monthly e-newsletter, Notes from the Horn Book. To receive Notes, sign up here.
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“Jane Eyre in Space,” said the email from the publisher suggesting this Talks, and I can’t tell you how tickled I was by the title, Jane Eyre in Space. You would think I’d be better by now at recognizing pitch-speech when I read it! But Brightly Burning, Alexa Donne’s first novel, does have a unique spin — orbital, even — on everybody’s favorite Victorian novel.
Roger Sutton: What can we infer from the two hooks of your book — Jane Eyre and space — about your own reading? What brought you to write this book?
Alexa Donne: I love classics, of course. Specifically I love Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, who were ahead of their time. Jane Austen was writing female-centered novels — not just romances, because they’re really social commentaries. And Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre — I think — was the first YA novel. At least it reads like one: it’s in the first-person, the protagonist is eighteen, she goes on the same journey that we know and love in YA fiction. I also love sci-fi and fantasy — I love anything genre in YA, especially set in space, high-concept with speculative twists. I watch a lot of television, and one of my favorite shows is Battlestar Galactica.
RS: Which means nothing to me.
AD: The dregs of humanity live on a fleet of spaceships in various states of disrepair. There’s lots of political intrigue and tension and drama. There are also space battles, but that’s not really my thing. I like people in confined spaces and extreme situations and the social dynamics that come from that. That’s essentially what Jane Eyre is. I love the gothic elements of the isolated manor, creepy things in the corridor, that undercurrent — it’s not supernatural or paranormal in Jane Eyre, but there’s a feeling that it could be, though it turns out to be something very human and awful. I love the build-up of the mood and the tone and then the twist.
RS: Did you have any trepidation in taking on Jane Eyre? Were there rules you didn’t want to break?
AD: I actually sat on this project for about two years because I wasn’t sure that I could do it justice. At first I thought I would have to write a pretty book, to write like Charlotte Brontë, who I can’t hold a candle to. I also wasn’t sure how to make changes that would work for contemporary YA, because you can’t have a contemporary YA novel with a love interest in his forties. Everyone brings their own expectations to a retelling of a beloved classic: “It’s not a Jane Eyre retelling without X.” I had to make my own choices and follow my gut. I hope that people love it, but honestly, if Jane Eyre fans don’t like something I changed or a direction I took, I understand.
RS: Is there anything about the original that you wanted to “fix”? The way we have Little Women fanfiction where Jo goes off with Laurie?
AD: I definitely wanted to change the “crazy wife in the attic” trope. I know that is such an important part of Jane Eyre, but I’ve never liked how Bertha is painted — she tricks Rochester into marrying her by hiding her mental illness. In that era, Rochester would have been doing her a kindness by keeping her at home in a fairly safe environment. But in modern times, hiding someone in an attic is really gross. And the fact that it was his wife: “My wife has a mental illness, so I’m going to ignore the fact that I’m married and hook up with this eighteen-year-old.” I also wanted to change St. John. He’s annoying, and he doesn’t respect Jane as a person. Generally speaking, I made changes to give my Jane Eyre character, Stella, more agency in the story. And Blanche Ingram is such a stock villain, I wanted to redeem her a little bit, make her a bit more rounded. I’m not a big fan of girls hating each other.
RS: And they do reconcile. Girl power.
AD: When I was seventeen, it was easy to be like, “Oh, the pretty girls don’t understand how hard it is for me, they have everything, they’re so lucky.” But when you actually have real conversations with people outside of high school, it’s illuminating. It can be wonderful, especially building relationships with women and ignoring a lot of the social baggage of judging women by what they look like and making assumptions about the kind of people they are. So I wanted to show that in the book.
RS: What was your own teen reading?
AD: The Giver was a really big, game-changing novel for me. I read it when I was eleven or twelve. I read Goosebumps, Fear Street, Baby-Sitters Club, and then I “upgraded” to Sweet Valley High. There was this series of cheesy romance novels, called Love Stories. I can’t remember who the publisher was, and no one’s ever heard of them. It was the precursor to what we know now as the high-concept contemporary YA romance. I read a lot of those. But I wish I’d had books like The Hunger Games when I was a teenager, or even Harry Potter. I came to Harry Potter a little bit late. I was seventeen when I read it, and it was life-changing for me, but I was barely still a YA.
RS: But you became involved in the Harry Potter fandom.
AD: The Harry Potter fandom was a huge part of my life. I worked on fan conventions, I read fanfiction and I wrote a little of it. I was thinking about Harry Potter and talking about it and connecting with other people about it almost every day for eight years.
RS: What part do you think that plays in creating a writer? That’s so different from when I was young, where writers would mostly grow up in isolation. We didn’t have these worldwide communities that could talk amongst themselves in microseconds.
AD: It definitely helped develop me as a writer in the sense that it gave me a space to experiment and push and fail in a very positive, supportive environment. Mostly positive and supportive; there’s always drama in fandom. But I was surrounded by people who loved the same thing that I did, who also wanted to explore the nooks and crannies of someone else’s fictional world. We were able to do that together, come together with a baseline of: we all love Harry Potter, so now let’s play with character and world and style and voice together. Let’s read each other’s work and give each other notes. I was able to develop confidence in my fiction-writing skills in a very safe place. But also, fandoms are microcosms. The Harry Potter fandom reminds me in a lot of ways of the current YA industry, in that there are a lot of people very passionate about the writing that they’re doing in one space, and there’s a lot of content to read. There are mini-celebrities within fandom worlds, and you learn humility when you’re not mega-famous within yours. I have a pretty seasoned perspective on the whole thing. I write because I love it, and I know that there are different readers for different books. You can’t be everything for everyone. I learned that from fandom.
RS: Yeah, I watched your YouTube video about reviewing [“Authors! Reviews Are Not for You!”]. Not out of any self-interest of course. But to find out how a writer can deal with reactions to her work.
AD: Yes. It’s easier said than done. I stand by everything I said, but I also read all my reviews, and it’s really interesting when you start to get the colorful negative ones. I’m cool — I’m not going to respond; the reviews are for readers. But it’s definitely tough. I did learn in fandom that you cannot make everyone happy, and engaging always makes it worse. Picking a fight never makes it better.
RS: No, it can’t help. And now you’re moving into this world of institutional reviews, like The Horn Book, Kirkus, Booklist, and School Library Journal.
AD: I’m excited about that. Reader reviews are fantastic, but you feel like you’ve arrived when you get a trade review, whether it’s good or bad. It’s so flattering to have a professional review your work.
RS: Well, it could be a very interesting journey. What are you going to do next?
AD: My next project is a retelling of Persuasion, also set in space. It is set in the same universe as Brightly Burning, but at a different time.
RS: As I was coming to the end of Brightly Burning, I was wondering if you, like so many, were setting me up for a sequel, but it doesn’t really seem like that would be possible with these characters.
AD: Yup, no sequel.
RS: Hallelujah.
AD: It stands alone. And Persuasion in space will also completely stand alone. Because they’re based on different classics, they each have a different tone. Brightly Burning is the romantic, gothic mystery. And Persuasion in space is, much like Jane Austen’s Persuasion, all about feelings.
RS: Will any of the same characters be in both books?
AD: There’s a little bit of crossover. Readers will pick out surnames that sound familiar. There are little connections that I’ve threaded through. But the stories take place far enough apart that there’s no direct overlap.
Print Marked Items
Donne, Alexa: BRIGHTLY BURNING
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Donne, Alexa BRIGHTLY BURNING HMH Books (Young Adult Fiction) $17.99 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-328-94893-9
In this feminist retelling of Jane Eyre, 17-year-old Stella Ainsley must choose between what is romantic and what is right--all while orbiting
uninhabitable planets.
When Stella finds out she's gotten her dream assignment as a governess aboard the spaceship Rochester, she is thrilled to escape her life as an
engineer on the decrepit Stalwart. Soon after arriving onboard, Stella finds that the Rochester is a ship full of secrets, the most compelling of
which is 19-year-old Capt. Hugo Fairfax, the handsome, brooding heir to a considerable fortune. Stella finds herself falling in love with the
captain even as she discovers the ship's dark past--a past that, eventually, forces her to choose between her conscience and her heart. Debut author
Donne crafts a fascinating world in which humans wait out an ice age in a fleet of spaceships orbiting the Earth, reproducing the same inequities
that existed on the ground. Donne populates her narrative with a reasonably diverse cast of characters (most of whom are white or Asian) who are
nuanced and sympathetic in their individual struggles against the class oppression that is the story's central theme. Stella, in particular, is a
skillfully rendered character whose independence, confidence, and insistence on consent are a welcome departure from the original Jane Eyre.
A gripping examination of class, romance, and survival set in a dystopian future that feels chillingly relevant to our present times. (Romance. 14-
18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Donne, Alexa: BRIGHTLY BURNING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375278/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=32cf9ee8. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375278
Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal
Andy Lewis and Rebecca Ford
Hollywood Reporter.
423.37 (Nov. 29, 2017): p30.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Prometheus Global Media LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
Full Text:
Between Me and You (LAKE UNION, JAN. 9, 2018)
BY Allison Winn Scotch AGENCY CAA
The author of multiple New York Times best-sellers marries her usual female-centric drama to a big Hollywood story: A fledging screenwriter
weds an aspiring actress. Years later, the disparity between her success and his threatens their marriage.
Brightly Burning (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, MAY 1, 2018)
BY Alexa Donne AGENCY UTA
It's Jane Eyre in space: This YA Gothic romance novel follows a bored 17-year-old who has spent her life on a spaceship orbiting the ice-covered
Earth until she's hired as a governess aboard the Rochester, a ship helmed by a rebellious 19-year-old captain.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Lewis, Andy, and Rebecca Ford. "Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal." Hollywood Reporter, 29 Nov. 2017, p. 30. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A518822093/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=26cb294d. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A518822093
Review of “Brightly Burning” by Alexa Donne
Posted on 05/21/2018
by rhapsodyinbooks
This fun retelling of Jane Eyre for young adults has a science fiction twist. It is set in outer space on ships that left Earth after a “supervolcano” led to an ice age. No one in space knows if the ice age is over – predictions at the time of the volcano ranged from 200 years to over a thousand.
Stella Ainsley, 17, is an engineer aboard The Stalwart, one of the dumpier ships in the fleet. She was orphaned at age 7, and literally shipped off from a nicer vessel by her Aunt Reed. Stella has been putting in applications to get a job as a teacher or governess, and finally got an offer from a private spacecraft, The Rochester. On that ship, which orbits the moon, Stella will serve as governess to 10-year-old Jessa, and will also provide auxiliary support to the chief engineer, Claire Poole.
When Stella finally gets to The Rochester, she discovers there are some mysteries aboard, including a mysterious cackling laugh she sometimes hears at night, as well as inexplicable attempts on the life of the 19-year-old captain, Hugo Fairfax. Hugo seems to like her, but she isn’t sure:
“He was looking at me now, pulling me into his orbit with those eyes that spoke volumes without saying a word. But they were mystery volumes; I could never tell if Hugo wanted to kiss me or throw me out into space.”
But then Hugo invites a large party from another ship, The Ingram, to come on board for a lengthy visit. The party includes Blanche, the beautiful daughter of its captain. Blanche seems clearly determined to marry Hugo, and Stella can’t imagine he would want to forgo the opportunity.
The broad outlines of what happens next are clear to fans of Jane Eyre, but Donne manages to add innovative twists to keep readers turning the pages.
Evaluation: This light and entertaining book will please fans of Jane Eyre, especially those who can accept this romance set among the stars instead of on the moors.
Rating: 3.5/5
Brightly Burning, by Alexa Donne | Book Review
The Children’s Book Review | May 1, 2018
Brightly Burning
Written by Alexa Donne
Age Range: 12 and up
Hardback: 400 pages
Publisher: HMH Teen
ISBN: 978-1-328-94893-9
What to expect: Jane Eyre retelling, science fiction, spaceships
A very modern update of a literary classic, BRIGHTLY BURNING takes Victorian fiction to the stars.
In the future, humans have fled to the safety of vast spaceships hovering above a frozen planet Earth. Stella Ainsley, a young engineer and part-time teacher, lives on one of the fleets oldest and most decrepit ships. She’s desperate for a way out and applies for teaching positions across the solar system. But when she’s hired by the private ship Rochester, she’s thrown a lifeline. It has plenty of resources, including almost unlimited water and food, and her charge is a precocious young girl. With all of the extravagances and niceties, Stella ignores the warnings that the Rochester might be haunted, or at the very least captained by a mad man.
When she finally meets Captain Hugo, she learns that not only is he young, but he’s kind in his own way. But strange mishaps and accidents begin to occur, throwing her growing feelings for Hugo, and the safety of the fleet as a whole, in to jeopardy. Can Stella uncover the truth and save hundreds of innocent lives in the process?
This exciting take on the classic Jane Eyre story will delight readers who cut their teeth on Victorian dramas. The unique setting, coupled with a few extra twists and turns, makes this story both familiar and compelling. A retelling done in the best way, Alexa Donne has managed to surprise and delight where other retellings might fall in to simple scenery swaps. The pacing is quick, and Stella is a vibrant heroine we can all root for. You may think you know how the tale ends, but you’ll enjoy staying up late to read through the final pages to see if your hunch is right. Donne is a talented writer with a knack for setting and just the right amount of humor. A joy to read, and it left me wanting a second book from Stella and Hugo.
Highly recommended.
Available Here:
About the Author
Alexa Donne is a Ravenclaw who wears many hats, including fan convention organizing, teen mentoring, college admissions essay consulting,YouTube-ing and podcasting. When she’s not writing science fiction andfantasy for teens, Alexa works in international television marketing. Aproud Boston University Terrier, she lives in Los Angeles with twofluffy ginger cats named after YA literature characters. Brightly Burning is her debut novel. Visit her at alexadonne.com, and on Twitter and Instagram at @alexadonne.
Brightly Burning, written by Alexa Donne, was reviewed by Denise Mealy. Discover more books like Brightly Burning by following along with our reviews and articles tagged with Science Fiction, Spaceships, Victorian, and Young Adult Fiction.
Review: BRIGHTLY BURNING by Alexa Donne
Deborah Krieger
July 3, 2018
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Brightly Burning is Jane Eyre in space. That’s the one-sentence pitch and summary of the novel, but it’s smart enough in what it keeps and sheds from the source text that it largely stands on its own. To put it into more fannish terms: if it were on the Archive of Our Own as a Jane Eyre alternate universe fic, I’d definitely be giving it kudos (and maybe leaving a little appreciative comment).
One of the first tests of whether I’ll enjoy a science fiction story is the effectiveness and intrigue of the world-building. In that regard, Brightly Burning delights; it’s precise and colorful without being too pedantic or exacting. The details emerge rather skillfully: several hundred years in the future, the Earth has become uninhabitable due to a natural disaster that left the planet frozen. The survivors escaped into a fleet of ships, essentially divided by country and/or nation, or by trade (as well as transport and private ships for the wealthiest); yet author Alexa Donne gives us this information organically, without a massive sprawl of paragraphs telling how society has (and hasn’t) changed since the end of the world. It’s remarkably lucky for the future of humanity that we’ve solved the problems of traveling through space, having enough fuel, dealing with orbits and space rocks, and keeping oxygen in place before we had to escape Earth.
As can be expected, the class divides that exist on Earth also get transported up into space: the elite wealthy inhabitants live it up in the Lady Liberty (the American ship), the Empire (the British ship), and other nation-ships, while Stella Ainsley, an engineer and teacher, is stuck on the Stalwart, where water is rationed and food is reduced to only the most essential nutritional components. Incredibly, there are just the right amount of characters to populate Donne’s world but not confuse the reader—although there are a few roles that could have been combined, like the handful of male friends Stella has on the Stalwart who are so thinly sketched as to blend together. The Stalwart is where the workers grow the crops for everyone else’s ships, so Stella is eager to escape what she sees as a disappointing lack of future prospects and takes a job as a governess on a private ship called the Rochester. Unfortunately for Stella, life on the Rochester isn’t as simple an opportunity it may seem, what with the strange noises in the middle of the night, just out of earshot.
The story kicks into gear when Stella arrives on the Rochester and meets Hugo Fairfax, the brooding, mercurial nineteen-year-old captain born into wealth and privilege. The heat and spark of this central romance is conveyed through Stella’s self-conscious, but increasingly determined interior monologue. Much like Twilight’s Edward Cullen, Brightly Burning’s Hugo Fairfax is not meant for me, but for the young adults who will be reading the book. (I’d have about ten seconds of patience for Hugo’s angsty, arrogant behavior, but if I picture him as looking like Ethan Peck circa 10 Things I Hate About You, the appeal starts to make sense.)
The lessening of the age difference between Stella and Hugo versus Jane and Rochester makes their relationship a little more equal, which is a very smart choice in terms of updating Jane Eyre to appeal to modern sensibilities. Yes, he’s her employer, but he’s barely two years her senior, and has a whole staff of crew-mates to keep him in line. The flipside of making the Rochester figure younger and closer to the Jane figure’s age is that it does, unfortunately, make the character make a little less sense. I’m twenty-four; it’s hard to picture a nineteen year-old, which to me is basically a baby, having the same seductively brooding mannerisms as Michael Fassbender in Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, for example.
The novel’s twist reflects and refracts (but does not copy) Rochester’s hiding his first wife in the attic, but because of the way Hugo’s role has been shifted from powerful landowner to someone barely out of his teens, Hugo comes across as a victim of circumstance and naiveté rather than a Rochester-esque antihero. He’s a moody kid with a dark past; Stella’s student on the ship is his sister, not his ward (or suspected daughter). He’s capricious with the affections of the beautiful Bianca Ingram and Stella alike; and it’s here that I really do have to remind myself that I’m not the intended audience for this book, because he’s clearly meant to appeal as a teen heartthrob bad-boy with a soft center type of character. Yet the disparate elements borrowed from Rochester, and those eschewed in this sci-fi update, make Hugo seem not like a character at all, but a set of ideas, or a symbolic obstacle for Stella. He’s not a real nineteen year-old or (I imagine) a real thirty-something year-old like Rochester, but an odd mixture of the two ages.
Unfortunately, since Brightly Burning really doesn’t start until Stella leaves the Stalwart, we don’t get the same depth of story that Jane does in Jane Eyre; the story is less about Stella Ainsley growing up and coming into her own, but about Stella-and-Hugo’s star-crossed romance. The characters we meet onboard the Rochester are carefully differentiated, if not necessarily all equally interesting; the portrayal of the upper-class Bianca, who wants to marry Hugo (and thus is Stella’s romantic rival) largely gives into the caricature of all the women we’re supposed to hate in romance novels, because they’re not the heroine: she’s beautiful, shallow, flirtatious, syrupy, selfish, which naturally contrasts with Stella’s plainer features, awkward and honest manner, and hardworking attitude. By the time Bianca reveals some hidden depths, it’s still not enough to counteract the sickly-sweet taste she’s left in our mouths.
Where Brightly Burning does lose steam is its last hundred or so pages. Whereas the development of the world of the book felt so careful in its earlier parts, the last act feels like the narrative is dashing from points A to B to C to get to when Stella and Hugo inevitably fall into one another’s arms and the story threads are all tied up in a bow. The inclusion of the element of mass media and newspapers feels entirely like a plot device, since they’re only really introduced late in the narrative in order to serve as yet another foe for Stella.
When Brightly Burning gets a little more complicated and daring is when Stella begins to question the nature of the way society has arranged itself, and how Hugo and his family are intertwined into the deepest mysteries and most terrible secrets of the fleet. I’d have actually preferred for Brightly Burning to lean in more to its themes of the dangers of greed and classism, its exploration of human nature and bravery, and to give us more of Stella herself, rather than hewing so closely to the expected Jane-Rochester romance in the source text.
Rating: 6/10