Reader, I Read It
A review of "Reader, I Married Him," a collection of short stories edited by Tracy Chevalier
The Gist:
A collection of stories inspire by Jane Eyre. Some of them retell the story of Jane Eyre focusing on one specific character; some add on to the story or tweak the plot. Others are simply inspired by the famous line, “Reader, I married him.” All of them are incredibly well-written by women!
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
I’m giving this 3.75 stars because I loved the concept of the book, and I loved the stories that used Jane Eyre plot or characters. (My favorite was one written from Grace Poole’s perspective!) There were a several stories that kept me on the edge of my seat or had mind-blowing, unexpected endings.
But it took me months to get through this book because I just couldn’t always get into some of the stories and it wasn’t super motivating to read. To acknowledge my own bias, I’m not the biggest fan of short stories, so this was an experiment in branching out for me! However, there were several stories that I found to be confusing, hard to follow, or open-ended and it often left me disappointed that it was included in the collection. Because the collection was inspired by Jane Eyre as well as the “Reader, I married him” line, there were several stories that I just didn’t see the connection to the original classic novel, and I was hoping there would be more that reminded me of Jane Eyre (which I adored).
Overall, this book sometimes left me excited about the creativity of the women who crafted the stories inspired by a legendary novel, but sometimes I thought the stories were just find. But if you are a lover of Jane Eyre, I recommend you give it a read; the stories that I loved the most were worth the read.
As always, give me a holler if you’re local and want to borrow. Happy reading!