R.I.P Thornfield Hall

Reader, I finished it.  As dreadful as it was at the start and in its mid-zone, it became perfectly, unspeakably awful by the finish.

In addition to the wildly inconsistent characterizations within sections, the tendency to tell rather than unfold the narrative, and the previously mentioned purple prose style, there's a conclusion which evokes arch references to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Now, this would not be a problem in and of itself, and in the hands of a more competent writer, it might even have been rather clever. 

Because as all Jane Eyre aficionados know, Du Maurier's novel is a mid-20th century riff on Charlotte Brontë's, and it's rather good in its own right.  It, too, has occasioned at least two spin-offs that I'm aware of, perhaps more.

But really, when Mrs. Fairfax suddenly morphs into a parody of Dame Judith Anderson doing Mrs. Danvers, it's all a bit too much. I'm as fond of  Du Maurier's tale as the next person, not to mention the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title -- but there's just no organic character or plot development in Tennant's novel.  It borders on camp, and I don't think camp is what she was aiming for.   Intertextuality, undoubtedly, but not camp.

Let's just say that I closed the covers of Thornfield Hall for a final time with a real sense of relief.