Jane Steele, by Lyndsay Faye, is being touted as a re-imagining of Jane Eyre.  (See for instance, here). This intrigued me, but it also made me anxious.  For the first couple of chapters I worried whether Faye could deliver – the stakes are high when it comes to meddling with one of the Bronte’s classics.

And then I realised: Lyndsay Faye hasn’t reworked Charlotte Bronte’s pivotal book – no matter how many reviews tell you she has! She is paying tribute to it.  This distinction is important, to me anyway, and once I pinpointed that I relaxed into this book and really enjoyed it.