The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel

About this book

Theres nothing quite like a Charyn novel. . . . His sentences make a mournful and sensational clatter like a bundle of butcher knives dropped on a cathedral floor. Jonathan Yardley Washington Post Jerome Charyn has been writing some of the most bold and adventurous American fiction for over forty years. His ten-book cycle of novels about madcap New York mayor and police commissioner Isaac Sidel inspired a new generation of younger writers in America and France where he is a national literary icon. Now adding to his already distinguished career Charyn gives us The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson an audacious novel about the inner imaginative world of Americas greatest poet. Channeling the devilish rhythms and ghosts of a seemingly buried literary past Charyn has removed the mysterious veils that have long enshrouded Dickinson revealing her passions inner turmoil and powerful sexuality. The story begins in the snow. Its 1848 and Emily is a student at Mount Holyoke with its mournful headmistress and strict strict rules. She sees the seminarys blond handyman rescue a baby deer from a mountain of snow in a lyrical act of liberation that will remain with her for the rest of her life. The novel revivifies such historical figures as Emilys brother Austin with his crown of red hair; her sister-in-law Sue; a rival and very best friend Emilys little sister Lavinia with her vicious army of cats; and especially her father Edward Dickinson a controlling congressman. Charyn effortlessly blends these very factual characters with a few fictional ones creating a dramatis personae of dynamic breadth. Inspired by her letters and poetry Charyn has captured the occasionally comic always fevered ultimately tragic story of Dickinsons journey from Holyoke seminarian to dying recluse compulsively scribbling lines of genius in her Amherst bedroom. Rarely before has the nineteenth-century world of New Englandits religious stranglehold its barbaric insane asylums its circus carnivalsbeen captured in such spectacular depth. Through its lyrical inflections and poetic rhythms its invention of a distinct twenty-first-century Charynesque language that pays remarkable homage to Americas sovereign literary past The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson provides a resonance of such power as to make this an indelible work of literature in its own right. 9 illustrations