Wine and Cheese Reception & Reading

Presented in Partnership with the Howard County Poetry & Literature Society

“Becoming Jane Eyre is lush and filled with dark sensuality and the tension of unsaid things. … Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and Sheila Kohler is one of my favorite writers.”
– Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

South African-born Sheila Kohler will read and talk about her new work, Becoming Jane Eyre, which begins in the dark room where Charlotte Brontë sits beside her ill father, gathering the rage to write Jane Eyre, and follows the writer through her memories to pen her masterpiece. A movie based on another of Kohler’s seven novels, Cracks, opens in U.S. theaters this year after debuting at the Toronto Film Festival. The film was directed by Jordan Scott, daughter of famed director Ridley Scott.

Ticket includes wine and cheese.

Sheila Kohler
In a dark room where her father lies recovering from eye surgery, Chrlotte Brontë seethes and scratches out a new novel. Her first book, sent out to prospective publishers in a bundle with her sisters’ books, has been rejected. Her married lover has turned his back on her. Her brother smokes opium and drinks himself into comas and love trouble. And yet Charlotte must remain, on the surface, a demure, middle-class parson’s daughter.

It is no wonder she invented the characters of the passionate Mr. Rochester and his mad wife in the attic for her masterpiece, Jane Eyre.

Sheila Kohler’s new novel, Becoming Jane Eyre, imagines the dichotomous life that Charlotte Brontë must have lived to create the governess’ tale of tempestuous love. The South African-born Kohler will read and talk about her work, Becoming Jane Eyre and six other novels, as well as short stories at this literary reception.

When she was 7, Kohler was read the first chapter of Jane Eyre, about the constricted life of the spirited girl who becomes the spirited governess. The story stuck with her because of its truth, Kohler says, and decades later, she began by researching the Brontës’ lives for Becoming Jane Eyre.

“I tried to stay as close to the facts as I could, but of course we never know everything about anyone,” Kohler says. “There’s always the crevasse, the dark place, the thing that we don’t know and that’s where the fiction comes in.” In Becoming Jane Eyre, which was a New York Times’ editors’ pick, Kohler creates narratives of the Brontë sisters and their afternoons writing in the parlor, their dissolute brother’s downfall and Charlotte Brontë’s ultimate triumph.

A movie based on another of Kohler’s novels, Cracks, opens in U.S. theaters this year after debuting at the Toronto Film Festival last fall. The story of an erotic scandal between a rule-flaunting teacher and her beautiful student at an isolated girls’ boarding school, Cracks relates the tale in the breathless voice of a fellow student. Cracks was chosen by the Library Journal and Newsday as one of the best books of 1999; Ridley Scott and his daughter Jordan are directors of the movie; Eva Green plays Miss G and Imogen Poots is Flamma, her student.

Most of Kohler’s fiction revolves around troubled power relationships. “When my sister died a violent death 25 years ago in apartheid South Africa, my writing took a new turn. I was driven to explore the reasons for violence within intimate relationships, in particular, the abuse of power and privilege,” Kohler says. “They represent my attempt to delve into the mysteries of hate and anger, and of love and compassion, as well.”

Kohler’s other works include Bluebird or the Invention of Happiness, Crossways, Children of Pithiviers, The House on R Street, and The Perfect Place. She has also written three books of short stories. Kohler’s work received the O. Henry Prize in 1988 and has won the Open Voice Prize, the Smart Family Foundation Prize, and the Willa Cather Prize. She now teaches at Princeton University.

Critics say:

"With an appreciation for their craft and sympathy for their difficult profession, Kohler’s Becoming Jane Eyre is a tender telling of the Brontë family’s saga and the stories they told.” -- The Boston Globe

“If you know Jane Eyre and love it, don’t deny yourself the pleasure of this intense little companion book.” – The Washington Post

“A beautiful complement to Brontë’s masterpiece.” – Kirkus Reviews