The Bront Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR

Vandever's irreverent debut novel dips into Victorian letters for inspiration, dredging up romantic angst to frame and foil a love story set in the age of new media. Sara Frost, a timid Charlotte Brontë scholar at a fictionalized New York university, is dragging her feet on both her engagement and her thesis, rooting around for Charlotte's vanished letters of unrequited love. The staid campus is roiled with the arrival of self-aggrandizing, firebrand Princess Diana scholar Claire Vigee. Sara's restive fiancé Paul, ignited by Claire's exhortations, bids her adieu and heads for Paris. Knocked off balance, Sara finds salvation in New Age narcissist Byrne Eammons, a film producer, who angles to spice up Charlotte's story for modern moviegoers. Drawn to Los Angeles and then Europe, Sara slowly finds her voice—determined not to suffer the fate of the "silent Victorian" she studies. Vandever, a screenwriter, sends up the pretensions of academia and the frippery of "infotainment," with its fast and loose readings of history. As Victorian romance runs up against pop psychology and banal reality, currents of love and longing unite past and present, but Vandever leavens Sara's self-discovery with liberal comic relief in this wickedly clever novel. Agent, Kirsten Manges . (Oct.)