{"product_id":"the-secret-life-of-emily-dickinson-a-novel","title":"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eTheres 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\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44964877598773,"sku":"ByrdShop_0393068560","price":28.3,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780393068566.jpg?v=1770483238","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-secret-life-of-emily-dickinson-a-novel","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}