Tag: biography

Book Review: Take Courage by Samantha Ellis

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TakeCourageAbout the Book

Anne Brontë is the forgotten Brontë sister, overshadowed by her older siblings – virtuous, successful Charlotte, free-spirited Emily and dissolute Branwell. Tragic, virginal, sweet, stoic, selfless Anne. The less talented Brontë, the other Brontë. Or that’s what Samantha Ellis, a life-long Emily and Wuthering Heights devotee, had always thought. Until, that is, she started questioning that devotion and, in looking more closely at Emily and Charlotte, found herself confronted by Anne instead. Take Courage is Samantha’s personal, poignant and surprising journey into the life and work of a woman sidelined by history. A brave, strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time – and her more celebrated siblings – and who has much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.

Format: Hardback Publisher: Chatto & Windus Pages: 344
Publication: 12th Jan 2017 Genre: Biography

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Book Depository
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life on Goodreads

My Review

I have my husband to thank for this absolutely fascinating book which was a very well-chosen birthday present. (Like all prolific readers, I am notoriously difficult to buy books for.) Unfortunately, it’s taken me quite a while to get around to reading it but I’m very glad I now have.

Anne’s last letter is the impetus for Samantha Ellis’s exploration of the life of Anne Brontë because it suggests a woman very different in character from the established portrayal. As her research progresses, Anne’s life and undervalued status seems to have a very personal resonance for the author. She sets out to prove Anne should not have been overlooked as a writer or in favour of her more famous siblings and that she has been mischaracterised. Samantha Ellis becomes Anne’s champion, determined to bring her out of the shadows and her position as the literary equivalent of ‘the third Beatle’.

The author examines Anne’s life through the prism of the people – principally the women – around her, and the heroines of her books, Agnes Gray and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.   In some cases, this involves a fair amount of speculation. For instance, Anne never knew Maria, her mother, because she died when Anne was only twenty months old. However, the author sees similarities in their appearance, piety and argues that Maria’s fledgling literary ambitions may have influenced her daughter. Similarly, there is very little known about Tabby, the Brontë’s cook and housekeeper, but the author surmises that it was Tabby who introduced Anne to the moors and inspired her love of nature.

There is more material to work with when it comes to Anne’s relationship with her sisters, Emily and Charlotte. Emily and Anne’s relationship was based on their shared literary endeavours, working together on creating the imaginary world of Gondal. Anne’s relationship with Charlotte comes across as altogether more complex and in fact Charlotte’s behaviour to her sister does not come out particularly well when placed under the spotlight. Anne’s public legacy was largely shaped by Charlotte who had control of Anne’s unpublished poems and published work. The author sees Charlotte as ‘more than anyone, responsible for Anne being seen as ‘the other Brontë’.

Sections of the book I particularly enjoyed were the author’s close readings of Anne’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Although it’s not always reliable to read the author through the character, Ellis makes some persuasive arguments. She also argues that Anne’s novels ‘fiercely’ rewrite Charlotte’s in terms of the realism of her heroines.  The author contends that Agnes Grey is a much more accurate portrait of life as a governess than Jane Eyre, and that Anne’s flawed heroes are more true to life than the Byronic figures – think Rochester and Heathcliff – imagined by her sisters.

The other standout section of the book is its closing chapter in which the author recounts very movingly the circumstances of Anne’s final days and death. What a potential literary powerhouse the world was robbed of by Anne’s early death. It’s interesting to ponder whether, had she lived longer, she might have been the Brontë sister everyone remembers and not her older sisters.

Samantha Ellis admits the documentary evidence that remains about Anne’s life is slight and although the arguments she advances are reasonable it’s fair to say they are based on a lot of supposition. The book is littered with ‘might’, ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’.  I’m in no position to judge the scholarly worth of this book (nor do I want to) but I found it utterly absorbing and it has made me determined to reread Anne’s novels (in editions that are not ‘hatchet jobs’).

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In three words: Absorbing, personal, moving

Try something similar…Catherine Dickens: Outside the Magic Circle by Heera Datta (click here to read my review)

SamanthaEllisAbout the Author

Samantha Ellis is a playwright and journalist. Her first book How To Be A Heroine was published in 2014. Her plays include Cling to Me Like Ivy, Operation Magic Carpet and How to Date a Feminist. She has written for the Guardian, Observer, TLS, Spectator, Literary Review, the Pool, Exeunt and more. She lives in London.

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Book Review: Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers

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katwe

A story of life, chess and one girl’s dream of becoming a Grandmaster

About the Book

Description (courtesy of Goodreads):  One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona Mutesi followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, who had also grown up in the Kampala slums.  Katende, a war refugee turned missionary, had an improbable dream: to empower kids through chess – a game so foreign there is no word for it in their native language. Laying a chessboard in the dirt of the Katwe slum, Robert painstakingly taught the game each day. When he left at night, slum kids played on with bottle caps on scraps of cardboard. At first they came for a free bowl of porridge, but many grew to love chess, a game that – like their daily lives – means persevering against great obstacles. By the age of eleven Phiona was her country’s junior champion and at fifteen, the national champion. Phiona’s dream is to one day become a Grandmaster, the most elite title in chess. But to reach that goal, she must grapple with everyday life in one of the world’s most unstable countries, a place where girls are taught to be mothers, not dreamers, and the threats of AIDS, kidnapping, and starvation loom over the people.

Book Facts

Format: ebook – to buy from Amazon, click here
Pages: 242
Publication date: October 2012
Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

My Review (3½ out of 5)

Subtitled “A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster”,   the book tells the true story of Phiona Mutesi, a girl from the Katwe slum area of Kampala, Uganda.  Phiona’s aptitude for chess is spotted by an inspirational mentor, Robert Katende, and soon it offers her the tantalising possibility of finding a route out of poverty and hardship.    She joins his group of “Pioneers” and it soon becomes obvious that she has a special talent.

I really enjoyed learning about the family background and upbringing of Phiona and her mentor, Robert Katende, who had an equally challenging start in life.    The book really brought to life how awful and precarious life is in the Katwe slums, its inhabitants constantly at the mercy of the elements and prey to disease, crime and addiction.

‘Katwe has no street signs.  No addresses.  It is a maze of rutted alleys and dilapidated shacks…Survival in Katwe depends on courage and determination as well as guile and luck.’

Expectations are low for the inhabitants of Katwe, particularly its women.   As the author notes: ‘If you live in Katwe, the rest of the Ugandan population would prefer that you stay there.’  He makes an interesting connection between the mental aptitude needed to master chess and the mental toughness needed to overcome the daily challenges of life in Katwe.   As one of Phiona’s fellow ‘Pioneers’ says:

‘The big deal with chess is planning.  What’s the next move?  How can you get out of the attack they have made against you?  We make decisions like that every day in the slum.’

When Phiona achieves her first tournament success, it opens up thoughts of new possibilities:  ‘I remember by the time I got home I felt I was not the Phiona of always.  I was a different Phiona.’  However, the book puts into context Phiona’s achievements in the chess world, which although tremendous for a girl of her background, are a long way from becoming a Grandmaster.  Similarly, the author is brutally realistic about the challenge Phiona faces in achieving this goal because of the need for financial support that is probably beyond the means of a country like Uganda, unlike say China or Russia.  In fact, it is this book (and subsequently the film adaptation of it) that has brought most financial benefit for Phiona and her family so far.

In separate sections of the book, the author contrasts Phiona’s story with the story of other Ugandan athletes and the struggles they faced to compete on equal terms in the world.  He also provides a lot of information about the founding of Sports Outreach, the project that enabled Robert Katende to set up his chess group.

Although I found the book fascinating in parts, the style was rather journalistic with lengthy interview-like quotes and therefore it was not as easy to read as I would have liked.    This is probably explained by the fact that the book grew out of an ESPN Magazine article.  Also, I would have preferred the book to focus mainly on Phiona, the other “Pioneers” and Robert Katende.   However, it is an inspiring story very proficiently told.

This book forms part of my From Page to Screen reading challenge.  I will be posting a comparison of the book and film separately.

In three words: Factual, informative, interesting

Try something similar…A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley

crothersAbout the Author

Tim Crothers is a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated who is currently a journalism professor and a freelance sportswriter. He is the author of The Man Watching, a biography of Anson Dorrance, the legendary coach of the University of North Carolina women’s soccer team, co-author of Hard Work, the autobiography of UNC basketball coach Roy Williams, and author of The Queen of Katwe, the story of a 16-year-old female chess champion from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Crothers lives with his wife and two children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Author Website