Tracy Chevalier's Top Book Recommendations

Tracy ChevalierI don’t know how Frances Hardinge came up with this crazy idea that a tree would feed on lies. I thought it was an incredibly creative way of using a tree. (Source)

Stephen DubnerI read it over and over in part because I felt it was describing to me what my parents’ life was like when they were kids. (Source)

Tracy ChevalierIt’s about an Irish-American family living in Brooklyn at the beginning of the 20th century. (Source)

Tracy ChevalierIt was in this book that I began to understand how hard it is to uproot a tree. (Source)

Tracy ChevalierMrs Wilcox tells Margaret Schlegel of a superstition about the wych-elm which grows by her family home, Howards End. (Source)

John SutherlandThere is an interesting debate … that the real heroine of Jane Eyre is not the plain little governess but the mad woman in the attic, Bertha Mason (Source)

Tracy ChevalierThe idea of marriage is that two people are going to become one, but here you know—because of the mad woman in the attic—that it’s one thing about to be split in two. (Source)

Audrey PennMy next one is Jane Eyre. She was orphaned and sent to a very rich aunt, who had her own very selfish children. Jane Eyre was not the perfect child and she was sent to live in a girls’ school. She made one friend, but unfortunately the little girl died, so she had to toughen up. She grew up there and learned everything she needed to know about teaching. She was a very good artist, she played a... (Source)