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Burning Bright |
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| Book: Hardcover | 9.25 x 6.25in | 320 pages | ISBN 9780525949787 | 20 Mar 2007 | Dutton Adult | 14 - AND UP years |
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Burning Bright follows the Kellaway family as they leave behind tragedy in rural Dorset and come to late 18th-century London. As they move in next door to the radical painter/poet William Blake, and take up work for a near-by circus impresario, the youngest family member gets to know a girl his age. Embodying opposite characteristics—Maggie Butterfield is a dark-haired, streetwise extrovert, Jem Kellaway a quiet blond introvert—the children form a strong bond while getting to know their unusual neighbor and his wife.
Set against the backdrop of a city nervous of the revolution gone sour across the Channel in France, Burning Bright explores the states of innocence and experience just as Blake takes on similar themes in his best-known poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
“A novel teeming with the complexities of life . . . Chevalier has a fine eye for detail and delightfully captures the sights, smells, and sounds of an earlier time.”
—Chicago Sun- Times
“Chevalier’s vivid descriptions and unusual mix of characters make this story an easy pleasure to read.”
—Library Journal
“A visual delight.”
—The Times (London)
“Chevalier’s writing is most lively and supple when depicting adolescent sexuality. Indeed, this novel could comfortably be classified as juvenile fiction—a very honorable genre. . . . If she succeeds in acquainting a new generation with the rapturous work of William Blake on the eve of the 250th anniversary of his birth, she can take pride in her accomplishment.”
—The Boston Globe
“[E]ighteenth-century London, from its shadier neighborhoods to its more elegant areas, arises from these pages in all its cacophony.”
—Booklist
“Chevalier’s signature talent lies in bringing alive the ordinary day-to-dayness of the past . . . lovingly evoked.”
—Elle
“A wonderfully vivid portrait of eighteenth-century London.”
—Time Out London
“Chevalier masterfully evokes a sense of working class life . . . [in] French Revolution– era London.”
—Entertainment Weekly
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