The classrooms that Charlotte hates feel unbearably confining and cramped. Greenberg uses very stark lines and colors for the real England scenes and she does a great job of conveying movement. I had a hard time getting used to the art, but I have to admit that the art is a big part of what, no pun intended, drew me in. I felt immersed in Charlotte’s reality and then, along with her, immersed in her imagination. I rooted wildly for Zenobia in Glass Town. I smiled whenever Charles teased her about a certain Arthur Nicholls (who Charlotte, in real life, married). I fretted over Charlotte’s real-life problems. It was fascinating to see the evolution of the one-dimensional Glass Town characters into the complex characters of her adult work. Charlotte’s character fits the way I’ve always imagined her (and the way biographers have described her). The characters of Glass Town have existed for so long that, to Charlotte’s dismay, they began to act without her. Within Glass Town itself, there is MUCH DRAMA and not all of it is of Charlotte’s invention. Charles and Charlotte discuss the whole history of Glass Town, why Charlotte rejected it, and whether or not she should return. So – the framing device in this book is that Charles, a character from Glass Town, has come to invite Charlotte to return to Glass Town now that Branwell, Anne, and Emily have died. She vowed to spend no more time writing or thinking about Angria. When Charlotte Bronte began teaching in Brussels, she became so consumed with thoughts of Glass Town that she feared she was losing touch with reality. They were joined by Emily and Anne, and proceeded to create a paracosm (my new favorite word – it refers to very elaborate world-building) called the Glasstown Confederacy and the world of Angria. In real life and as described in Glass Town, young Charlotte and her surviving siblings, Branwell, Emily, and Anne, created an imaginary city called Glass Town. While I was initially put off by the art, it grew on me, and the plot enchanted me from the first page. Glass Town is about the imaginary worlds that the Bronte siblings created. Glass Town is an enchanting graphic novel that has, in professional terms, “weird but effective art.” That’s the kind of lofty professional assessment that gets me the big bucks, folks.

Glass town isabel greenberg