The Flight of Gemma Hardy

By Margot Livesey

(Harper)

Scottish-born author Margot Livesey brings the country of her birth to blazing life in the thoroughly winning “The Flight of Gemma Hardy.”

A delicious updating of “Jane Eyre” to the mid-20th century, the book shares many elements with Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 classic: an intelligent, plain-featured heroine who’s emotionally and physically abused by her aunts and cousins after being orphaned; privation and hardship as a “working student” at a boarding school; death of her sole friend; escape to work caring for a withdrawn child; and falling in love with the little girl’s brooding, mysterious benefactor.

Eyre aficionados should not expect the novel to follow that book’s trajectory explicitly, however. Especially in the latter third, Gemma takes dramatic, and exquisitely gratifying, departures from its inspiration. There’s a madwoman, and there are ghosts, but they’ll appear in different guises than you expect.

Gemma is portrayed as even more of an outsider than Jane was, having been born in Iceland and brought to England as a child after her parents’ deaths. She longs for whatever family she might have left there, and for the revelation of her real Icelandic name (it was changed when she moved to England).

Livesey centers the story much more around Gemma’s search for home and identity than the love story with Rochester stand-in Mr. Sinclair, who doesn’t, truth be told, brood all that compellingly.

The author, who now lives in the Boston area, is most brilliant at sketching character and place, to the point that readers will feel strongly connected even to characters who have died before the story begins, such as Gemma’s kind uncle.

The nastier characters, such as her aunt, are illuminated with telling bits of dialogue. As she’s being sent to boarding school, the keenly observant Gemma notices her aunt’s request for tickets. “One way, or return? First or second class?” the agent inquires. “One way, second class,” the aunt replies, and Gemma remarks that she “sounded pleased about both.”

On its own, Gemma Hardy would be a strong, satisfyingly diverting piece of literature. As a companion to Jane Eyre, it’s that, and also a fascinating statement on how far women had advanced in society and status (or hadn’t, as the case may be) in the 100 years between the novels’ time periods. You probably won’t fall in love with Mr. Sinclair, as generations of female readers have done with Mr. Rochester, but you’ll definitely feel emotionally connected to the novel’s spirited and determined heroine. (MCT)