You can't be familiar with the brooding moorlands near Howarth and not feel as though you understand something of the Bronte family and their lives. Most of us think we know something about them: the mother and sisters who died, the sisters who remained hewing their path towards immortality in slow, painful steps. And then there's the brother, Bramwell, the black sheep, fighting his failures, his addictions, his inability to find a way to make something of his life. He is the subject, in fact the 'author' of this book. He paints a sorry picture of his stumbling path, in the final year of his young life, towards illness, addiction and death. I found the picture he painted of himself - hopelessly depressed, fault-finding, increasingly estranged from his family, increasingly self-deluded a fascinating one. In this book, Bramwell does not dig deep in his moments of introspection, but then you wouldn't expect him to. He doesn't favour us with pen portraits of his father, his sisters. Just tantalising glimpses of what they're like. But nobody is more self-centred, less self-aware than Bramwell Bronte. Edric has carefully constructed this book in a series of vignettes that barely constitute a narrative, but which leave us feeling bewildered sympathy for an intelligent young man who has utterly lost his way. A beautifully imagined reconstruction of a life ill-lived. ( )

'You're the parson's son...that suffering man'

While books about the Brontes normally only show their brother Branwell as a background figure, Edric makes him the narrator and hence principal character. Set in the year 1848, the last year of Branwell's life, we follow him on drunken nights out with his friends - like him, largely 'failures' in their artistic lives; we see him dragged ever further down in his own and his sisters' estimation, as bailiffs come knocking for the debts he's racked up, and we see his recollections: of the illegitimate child he fathered, of the married woman he loved, and who rejected him, and of his utter lack of success in his work, from painting and poetry (especially set against the sisters' growing fame) to even being ignominiously sacked from the railways. In his lack of religious belief, he has even failed his godly - but loving - father.
His (indeed, all the children's) 'sanctuary' is the Haworth Parsonage, and Edric imagines the family dynamics: Charlotte's increasing anger and acerbity in her dealings with her brother as she settles his bills; Emily's love; his father's prayers and cherishing.
He sets this against the contemporary events: building work, religious dissent, the ever-extending railways...
I really enjoyed this unusual take on a family and a story that were already well known to me. I became more sympathetic to a character who tends to be presented as a 'dead loss', as I read the account from his own point of view. ( )

“Guard your good name. My own given names imprison me with their history, and are serpent and lamb to me. Some would say my very nature is born of them – I am betrayed by my instincts and damned by them.”
-Patrick Branwell Bronte

“You are a fortunate man and your home is a fortress and a sanctuary…”

Sanctuary by Robert Edric is a fictional account of Patrick Branwell Bronte’s last months. Set in Haworth, West Yorkshire in 1848, the Year of Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution is in full swing but the seeming promise it made of wealth and prosperity for all is less than an illusion for most. This is a period of change as the old ways are being swept away by the new wave of technology and ‘progress’. His father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte, ministers to the miners who live lives marked mainly by constant illness and early deaths. The Rectory, itself is situated near the moors and next to a graveyard. Bronte has been trying to get the graveyard expanded to accommodate the rising number of deaths but without success.

Yet, these miners seem much more content than Branwell who has pretty much failed at everything he has tried: poet, artist, tutor, railroad station clerk. He has returned home to lick his wounds. His home could be the sanctuary he seeks but he refuses to see it. He divides his time in drunken meetings with his friends and dodging his creditors. His father prays for him and his sisters preach at him.
Charlotte, once his greatest friend and admirer, is now his greatest critic. She pays off some of his debts which only increases the resentment on both sides. Reverend Bronte is loved and respected by his parishioners and the sisters are eliciting fascination from his friends and the media but Branwell sees it all as an indictment of himself. Instead of seeing how good his life is compared to many of his father’s parishioners or his friends, he only sees his own failures.

Yet, it is clear that his family loves him and wants only the best for him. They even try to keep the sisters’ success from him, going off on mysterious trips to London. When he sets his bed on fire, his father starts to sleep with him: Branwell sees this as a way to punish and imprison him while the rest of the family see it as an attempt to protect him from himself. When others offer a life-line to him, he sees a rod and hook. Despite the fact that both Anne and Emily are sick and his father is becoming frail, Branwell continues to demand constant attention and the limited resources from the family.

As I read Sanctuary, I kept thinking I should hate this book. Branwell is the narrator and it is a litany of self-pity and self-recriminations. The story tends to consist of short episodes, meetings with various friends in different public houses, attempts to avoid creditors and his father’s prayers, and moments of nostalgia, remembering their childhood when, as the only boy, he was the main object of his sisters’ affections. The sisters often seem like shrews, constantly berating him over his failures when he thinks they should be more understanding. He is annoying, selfish, and completely self-centred. He blames everyone for his failure including, in his more rational moments, himself but is unwilling or unable to change. And yet, somehow, Edric made me care just a little for him and want to know him just a little bit better. Edric is also a master at capturing the feel of the particular time and place and he brings to the pages a real sense of the world that produced the literary genius of the Bronte sisters. It is well-written, often lyrical, and insightful. Based on real events, it is a fascinating look at a man who, despite his early promise and the constant love of his brilliant family, became the author of his own failures. ( )