In Fifteen Wild Decembers, Powell embarks upon an ambitious creative endeavour – to creatively imagine the life of a literary icon, Emily Brontë. This involves not just conjuring up a fresh perspective on well documented biographical details, or recreating the external world she inhabited, but, critically, attempting to articulate the internal life, the psyche and the voice of a creative genius. To write in the first person, as Brontë herself, is an act of creative ventriloquism that requires great authorial confidence, sensitivity, and intuition. It is clear that Powell has immersed herself deeply in Wuthering Heights and Brontë's poetry to find an authentic voice for her narration – one that is imbued with the melancholic sensibilities and wild spirit of Brontë's work.
Powell acknowledges at the end of her novel how much the biographical writing of Juliet Barker informed its writing. If a Brontë enthusiast is keen to separate fact from fiction, then Barker’s source material, or Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth, may serve them better than this fictional foray. What Powell offers with her novel, however, is the opportunity to experience a well-informed reconstruction of a life in a more intimate way.
[ The enigma of Emily Brontë: ‘I think she suffered from social anxiety’ ]
Powell has written into the silences that exist around the facts, extracting meaning from correspondence in the archives, to offer a deeper understanding of the known circumstances of Brontë's life. Although this is Emily’s narrative, Powell offers a plausible reimagining of how this trio of siblings, the daughters of a clergyman, isolated in rural Yorkshire, had within them the power to produce some of the most beloved and acclaimed works in literary history. At its strongest, this novel illuminates the subterranean life that underpinned the writing of Wuthering Heights, delicately foreshadowing the novel to be in the minutiae and emotional landscape of her narration.
This novel, recently shortlisted for the Fiction Prize in the new Nero Book Awards, is a graceful account of a life that treats its subject with the meticulous research and thoughtful handling it deserves. The result is a deeply satisfying reading experience that should appeal greatly to all those for whom Brontë holds a special significance in their reading history.
