Tim Powers is a name more people should know. His The Annubis Gates and Declare novels are essential reading to any speculative fiction fan. And his On Stranger Tides populated many of the ideas of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, not only the fourth one. Now he’s back with a new novel, My Brother’s Keeper.
I’ve not read all of his novels, but I have read The Stress of Her Regard way back in my past. I only remember my feelings about the novel, but to this day, I cannot read Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci the same way. And, though my rational mind knows Keats died naturally, my romantic mind thinks he died the way Powers depicted it.
I bring up The Stress of Her Regard because My Brother’s Keeper is quite similar to that novel. In Stress, the novel’s main characters are Keats, Shelley, and Lord Byron. In My Brother’s Keeper, Powers has made protagonists of the Brontë sisters. The heroine of the novel, Emily Brontë, is indeed the very same author of Wuthering Heights. If you read the history of the Brontë family, you’ll be amazed at what they accomplished in such a short time. Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. We lost them all, sadly, much too young.
My Brother’s Keeper imagines an intrusion of the supernatural world into the moors and heaths where the Brontë sisters lived. When Emily finds a severely wounded man on the moors, she’s surprised to find him missing after she goes for help. He’s left behind a curious blade which Emily keeps. The Brontë sisters’ brother, Branwell, has secrets of his own he’s keeping from the family. How does all this tie to a ritual conducted by three of the children when they were young? And why does the family patriarch fire a bullet over the church’s graveyard at dawn?
One thing about Powers’ novels is they over-deliver on their premise. If I summarized this entire book’s plot, most readers would think it outrageous. But that’s the magic. Powers, with his accurate historical descriptions and fascinating characters, makes the narrative seem so real. The novel twists and turns with some characters growing in resolve and others weakening. And it’s evident that Powers has a true depth of feeling for the real Brontë family in this fascinating horror fantasy.
Wuthering Heights is a great novel and deserves its title of classic. It may be the most famous Brontë novel of them all. My Brother’s Keeper may not thrill fans of Wuthering Heights. Romance is missing in Keeper, and a rousing ghost story (mostly) missing in Heights. Yet, for that cross-section of speculative fiction readers who enjoy their classic literature, this book was made for them.