From Publishers Weekly
When Charlotte Brontë died in 1855, she left behind a 20-page manuscript, which Irish novelist Boylan (Holy Pictures, etc.) uses as the first two chapters of her own sprawling novel. The result is a deeply satisfying Victorian mystery, at once cozy, witty, didactic and melodramatic. A young girl named Matilda Fitzgibbon is deposited at a ladies' school run by the "fantastic, affected and pretentious" Wilcox sisters. But Matilda is a "pseudo-heiress," unrelated to the elegant (and now vanished) gentleman who enrolled her. Spurned by the Wilcoxes, Matilda is taken in by motherly Isabel Chalfont, a childless widow whose comfortable station and "middling" temperament conceal a passionate romantic history. But Matilda proves to be "no ordinary child"â€"secretive and prone to fainting spells, she claims to have no memory of her past, other than having been "sold like a farmyard creature." When she runs away, stealing the money still due the Wilcoxes, Mrs. Chalfont turns to her enigmatic friend Mr. Ellin, who tries to determine what happened. Searches through London's dirty streets reveal nothing. Meanwhile, Matildaâ€"who realizes that her name is actually Emmaâ€"faces hunger, homelessness and conscription into child prostitution, as she searches for the mother who gave her up. Boylan's evocation of Victorian London is bleak but enthralling, and her characters turn Brontë's sharp sketches into nuanced creations. The plot is feverish and overly dependent on coincidence, and there are a few anachronisms, but who'll complain? Brontë purists, maybeâ€"but other readers will embrace this as a treasure unearthed. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Before she died in 1855, Charlotte Bronte completed two chapters of a new novel with the working title Emma. Boylan has constructed her own novel from this tantalizing fragment, in which a girl is deposited at a provincial boarding school under a cloud of mystery. The melodramatic plot revolves around the girl's search for her true identity. Boylan makes use of the characters introduced by Bronte and attempts to borrow her "voice" by using lines from her letters. She also plunges her heroine into a Dickensian foray into London's slums on the assumption that Charlotte would have wanted to use her own impressions of London as material for her fiction. Whether this novel is anything like the one Charlotte would have written is beside the point; Boylan's work succeeds on its own as a compelling tale. Though rather tame compared to Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (2002) and Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), it should appeal to readers fascinated by Victorian England and its underside. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Charlotte Bronte's death in 1855 deprived the world of what might have been her masterpiece. The twenty unfinished manuscript pages about a lost young girl - which signaled her most compelling work since Jane Eyre - sat in waiting for almost 150 years until Irish novelist Clare Boylan decided to finish it. This tale allows Bronte's tantalizing fragment of a novel, at last, to blossom." "Emma Brown is the story of a young girl, Matilda, brought by her father to a small girls' school in provincial England. The school, Fuchsia Lodge, is foundering, so its new headmistress is delighted to welcome a new pupil - especially one so elaborately dressed with an apparently rich father who is "quite the gentleman." But when the school term ends and it comes time to make arrangements for the Christmas holidays, Matilda's tuition goes unpaid, and the headmistress is shocked to find that the identity of the father, Conway Fitzgibbon - like the address he left behind - is a fiction. Before long, it becomes clear that the little heiress herself is not who she seemed." So who is the mysterious Matilda? When the girl refuses to reveal her true identity and then disappears, it falls to a local gentleman, Mr. Ellin, and Isabel Chalfont, a childless widow who briefly takes the girl in, to unravel the truth. In a journey that takes them from the drawing rooms of English country society to the grimy streets and back alleys of London's seamiest reached, Emma Brown follows the search - first for Matilda's real identity and then for the girl herself.

FROM THE CRITICS

Miranda Seymour - The New York Times

By making sporadic use of Bront￯﾿ﾽ's own phrases, Boylan succeeds in creating a book that is convincing in voice even while it tells a vivid, dramatic and richly absorbing story. Her sense of the period is both precise and evocative; the characters Bront￯﾿ﾽ had briefly but confidently sparked into life are plausibly developed, while their histories are artfully entwined … Emma Brown is a powerful and magnificently written novel that does ample justice to the two brief chapters from which it sprang.

Publishers Weekly

When Charlotte Bront died in 1855, she left behind a 20-page manuscript, which Irish novelist Boylan (Holy Pictures, etc.) uses as the first two chapters of her own sprawling novel. The result is a deeply satisfying Victorian mystery, at once cozy, witty, didactic and melodramatic. A young girl named Matilda Fitzgibbon is deposited at a ladies' school run by the "fantastic, affected and pretentious" Wilcox sisters. But Matilda is a "pseudo-heiress," unrelated to the elegant (and now vanished) gentleman who enrolled her. Spurned by the Wilcoxes, Matilda is taken in by motherly Isabel Chalfont, a childless widow whose comfortable station and "middling" temperament conceal a passionate romantic history. But Matilda proves to be "no ordinary child" secretive and prone to fainting spells, she claims to have no memory of her past, other than having been "sold like a farmyard creature." When she runs away, stealing the money still due the Wilcoxes, Mrs. Chalfont turns to her enigmatic friend Mr. Ellin, who tries to determine what happened. Searches through London's dirty streets reveal nothing. Meanwhile, Matilda who realizes that her name is actually Emma faces hunger, homelessness and conscription into child prostitution, as she searches for the mother who gave her up. Boylan's evocation of Victorian London is bleak but enthralling, and her characters turn Bront 's sharp sketches into nuanced creations. The plot is feverish and overly dependent on coincidence, and there are a few anachronisms, but who'll complain? Bront purists, maybe but other readers will embrace this as a treasure unearthed. (On sale Apr. 12) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

From a meager 20 pages left by Charlotte Bronte, Boylan (Beloved Stranger) has fashioned a credible Victorian novel replete with orphans and paupers, governesses and shopkeepers, crusading journalists and scoundrels. As the tale opens, young Matilda Fitzgibbon, accompanied by trunks of expensive clothing, is delivered by her aristocratic father to the Fuchsia Hall boarding school, where it is hoped that her wealth will serve to attract other well-heeled pupils. It soon becomes evident that Matilda is an impostor. The man posing as her father is unreachable, and she herself is suffering from amnesia. A local gentleman named William Ellin and the widowed Isabel Chalfont step in to rescue Matilda and attempt to solve the puzzle of her origins. But before long, she escapes to London, determined to find her own answers. Her journey puts her in the path of a particularly unsavory ring of thugs involved in the abduction and sale of young girls into prostitution. Verging on melodrama, with a plot a little too coincidence-laden, this successor to Jane Eyre is still entertaining and should be popular with readers who cannot get their fill of Victoriana. Purchase for most public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/03.]-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews