Half-Life of a Stolen Sister - Rachel Cantor

 

Rachel Cantor's Half-Life of a Stolen Sister is, without doubt, the strangest book I am likely to read in all of 2023. I'm ready to give it that award right now - and I mean that as a compliment, not as a criticism. Rather than writing just any old fictionalized version of the tragic lives of the Brontë siblings and their parents, Cantor decided to take her interpretation of the Brontës a few steps further. Here, she mixes centuries by giving the Brontë siblings access to modern conveniences such as email, home movies, airplanes, television interviews, and radio interviews, etc. But wait. Before you throw your hands up and walk away from Half-Life of a Stolen Sister because of that, let me tell you that it all works brilliantly to paint an unforgettable portrait of the Brontës. 

The barebones history of the Brontë family is well known: 

• They were a 19th century British family that produced five daughters and one son.
• The first two daughters died in the same year at ages ten and eleven.
• The other four children died before their fortieth birthdays (only Charlotte even came close).
• The three youngest daughters produced classic literary masterpieces.
• The only Brontë son was so hopelessly addicted to alcohol that the addiction controlled and ruined his life.

But what must the rather reclusive Brontës have really been like? That is precisely the question that Cantor tries to answer with Half-Life of a Stolen Sister. 

Early in their childhoods, the four remaining Brontë children discovered that they could entertain themselves by collaborating on long stories about heroic figures in other lands. The creative spark they shared even as children would eventually produce the books they are still remembered for today - but that is not the part of the Brontë story that Cantor focus on here. 

Instead, Cantor "interprets" what the relationships and strong bonds between the siblings and their father must have been like. The Brontës were a family in which family loyalty and love of each other came first, but Half-Life of a Stolen Sister gives readers a fresh way of seeing each Brontë as a unique individual. Cantor's choice to modernize their daily world makes them easier to identify with, too, helping the reader see them as actual living, breathing human beings rather than just some famous family of stick-figures from literary history. 

Brontë biographers will, of course, not want to hear it, but I come away with a better feel for who the Brontës really were from reading Half-Life of a Stolen Sister than I did from any of the Brontë biographies I've read to date. I realize that the book is speculation on the part of a single writer, but even if the details are only best guesses on Cantor's part, she has almost certainly captured the essence of perhaps the most unique literary family the world has ever seen. For the first time, they feel like real people to me.

Rachel Cantor jacket photo