Name: The Madwoman Upstairs
ISBN: 9781784297718

Catherine Lowell

'A funny, smart read with a kick-ass heroine' Sun on Sunday. A witty, light-hearted comedy about love and fiction, and the all-important difference between the two. Think you know Charlotte, Emily & Anne? Think again. Samantha Whipple is the last remaining descendent of the illustrious Brontë family, of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre fame. After losing her father, a brilliant author in his own right, it is up to Samantha to piece together the mysterious family inheritance lurking somewhere in her past - yet the only clues she has at her disposal are the Brontë's own novels. With the aid of her handsome but inscrutable Oxford tutor, Samantha must repurpose the tools of literature to unearth an untold family legacy, and in the process, finds herself face to face with what may be literature's greatest secret.

A light-hearted literary comedy

The Madwoman Upstairs

Natalie Unsinn 

“The purpose of literature is to teach you how to think, not how to be practical. Learning to discover the connective tissue between seemingly unrelated events is the only way we are equipped to understand patterns in the real world.” 

Elena M.

If you can’t think of anything intelligent to say, don’t say anything at all.

...books don’t have answers because life has no meaning.

Passion. There it was, my least favorite word. It was the elusive—yes, meaningless—term people used when they wanted to believe they were more human than other humans.

Love always came with scars, and this was mine: the knowledge that the friends I knew best were those I had never actually met.

Ergo, authors uniformly assume madness is deep. They’re wrong. Sometimes, insane people aren’t tortured artists. Sometimes, insane people are just insane.

 I scooted closer to my soggy, chattering classmates, aware of the acute loneliness you feel when surrounded by so many other people.

The real problem was this: my father was in the grave, and I could do nothing to write him out of it.

He lived in the past because nothing was at stake there.

You’re determined to honor your pain because you think it defines you.

To reconstruct a dead person’s intention is to create a piece of fiction yourself

You are desperately alone and I’m afraid that this is what desperately alone people do—you attach significance to imaginary things to ease your sense of emptiness.

Reading teaches you courage. The author is trying to convince you something fake is real. It’s a ridiculous request, and it questions the sanity of the reader. The extent to which you believe the author depends on how willing you are to jump in headfirst.

You want a reason to believe that there is something out there larger than yourself, something that makes all the petty things you’ve been through seem irrelevant.

"A debut novel about the last remaining descendant of the Brontees who discovers that her recently deceased father has left her a treasure hunt that may lead to the long-rumored secret literary estate"--

A Novel

Sahi K

The premise of the book looked exciting because it had three super interesting elements - Bronté sisters, the last living descendant of the Bronté family and a treasure hunt. It starts with Samantha Whipple, the last living descendant of the Bronté family joining Oxford Old College to study English Literature. Even though speculation is rife all over that she inherited the "Vast Bronté Estate" even though all she got was her father's bookmark and words that one day she would inherit the "Warnings of Experience". And then she starts receiving her father's copies of the Bronté books one by one. She also slowly starts falling in love with her tutor Orville.

And that's all I understood in the book. The whole treasure hunt plot is almost nonexistent. There is some discussion about different interpretations of the sisters' books, their semi-autobiographical nature and how much of their books impacted their lives. This is probably the only saving grace of the book. There was a lot of banter between Samantha and Orville but it will probably make more sense to students of English Literature. Which brings me to the worst part of the book - it's narrator Samantha. She hates her family legacy, the sisters, the course she has enrolled to study and pretty much everything else. She comes across as naive, confused, disrespectful and obsessive. It was very difficult to find anything likable about her.

Sometimes you want to complete books even though you don't like the characters because there is something inherently interesting; here, I couldn't wait for it to get over fast enough.

Tyler Rodrigues

Saili

azliana aziz

Cindi Coan

Lane Hokanson

Maria Nelson

Shannon Arputharaj

Mandi Jayne

Deborah Meades

Elizabeth Garza

Antonella Romani

Elizabeth Hisserich

Rachel Rozdzial

Alice Foster

Amy Soukup

Ashley Pennington

Samantha Whipple - a young American woman - is the last remaining descendent of the famous Brontë family, of 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre' fame. After losing her father, a brilliant author in his own right, Samantha travels to Oxford in search of a mysterious family inheritance, described to her in her father's will only as 'The Warnings of Experience'. While at Oxford, Samantha studies under Professor J. Timothy Orville III, a disarmingly handsome tutor who seems nothing but annoyed by her family heritage. With Orville as her tempestuous sidekick, Samantha sets out on a mission to piece together her family's history - which, it turns out, may also be literature's greatest buried secret.

The Madwoman Upstairs A light-hearted literary comedy

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