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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/02/isabel-greenberg-glass-town-graphic-novel-charlotte-bronte With Glass Town, the former Observer graphic short story prize winner explores the sisters’ fictional childhood landscape •Read an extract from Glass Town When Isabel Greenberg’s third graphic novel begins, it is July 1849. A young woman with a pugnacious jaw and a pair of unflattering spectacles on the end of her nose is striding out across a moor, oblivious both to the damp underfoot – the book’s first frame shows nothing more than a ladylike boot splashing through a puddle – and to the looming clouds above. Tiny in her bonnet beneath the vast, steely sky, this woman, for all her determination, strikes the reader as terribly alone. And she is alone, for this is the writer Charlotte Brontë. In the course of the past year, she has lost all three of her living siblings – Anne, Branwell and Emily – to tuberculosis; she is still deep in grief. But then something strange happens. No sooner has she spread a blanket over the heather, and taken off her bonnet, than a dashing fellow suddenly appears beside her. He is not dressed for the moor. He wears a top hat, a scarlet cravat, dazzling white breeches and, somewhat incongruously, a pair of sunglasses. Who is he? Is this peacock with the spiky, rock-star hair real, or is he a figment of her imagination? Continue reading...
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