Launch: Stephanie Cowell’s The Man in the Stone Cottage

INTERVIEW BY ANNE EASTER SMITH

Stephanie Cowell is the author of Marrying Mozart, Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet, The Boy in the Rain, and The Man in the Stone Cottage. Her work has been translated into several languages. She has received an American Book Award.

How would you describe your book?

In 1846 Yorkshire, the Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Anne and Emily—navigate lives marked by heartbreak and struggle. Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. No one will publish their poetry or novels. Then Emily encounters a charming shepherd on her solitary walks on the moor who will begin to change her life and her writing though no one else has ever seen him. Years later, Charlotte, now the successful author of Jane Eyre, sets out to discover her sister’s secret. The Man in the Stone Cottage is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can truly be real to another.

How long has this book been in the making? And why is now the right time for it?

I started it about 2008 – my books are often in genesis for many years and then one comes forward. At that point this book was just about Charlotte. But my editor at Viking at the time said, “We don’t need more books about the Brontës,” so I worked on something else. I picked it back up about five years ago and one of the scenes where the children go and buy paper to write on at the village stationers really resonated with me, and it went from there. I went back to Haworth (the Brontë house in Yorkshire) and recorded on my little iPhone everything I saw and heard, like whispers, shadows and creaks.

How difficult was it to draw these characters? How was the source material for them?

We have Charlotte’s diaries, and lots of letters to friends and her publisher. Some about her brother and a lot about how angry she was at being a governess and about not being taken seriously. There’s a lot less on Emily. Only a few letters and one precious diary entry about what was happening in the kitchen! She was very secretive. It was true she didn’t want to share her poetry or her book and became angry about it when Charlotte asked to see them and publish them; she didn’t have the need Charlotte did for acclaim.

You have those two sisters as dual POVs. Did you relate to one or the other more when you started, and did that change?

It was all Charlotte when I started and then, when that scene in the stationers came up, Emily’s voice started to enter the narrative. I relate to Emily as a creature of her imagination, but I am probably more pragmatic, like Charlotte. Charlotte was earthbound whereas Emily lived in her mind more.

When I read the book, I felt as though one of the sisters could have written it. Which sister’s writing influenced you more?

I really couldn’t say—both, I think. It all happened organically, and especially when I went back through that magical house. I felt their bodies, I felt their moods—it just kind of came. This book just flowed through me.

Is the “man in the stone cottage” your metaphor for Heathcliff? Did the isolation of the moors allow more superstition about ghosts and fantasies to thrive?

The shepherd is from my imagination and not necessarily an inspiration for Heathcliff. Besides Jonathan is a much nicer fellow! I can’t tell how real he was to Emily. We all create a person we love and imbue traits in that may not be true, don’t we? With Charlotte, she fantasized something romantic with her young publisher that may or may not have been real. And yes, definitely the folklore about ghosts there is a product of that wild, isolated place, but let’s not forget that ghosts were prevalent in a lot of literature of the time and we know the sisters read Byron, Mary Shelley and the like.

It is obvious you have walked those moors and understand the importance of place in this book. As a lass from Manhattan, what was it like to walk there?

(Laughs) If you don’t know them, they can be intimidating. No one told me not to wear my blue city pumps, which got covered in mud, and then sheep came up to me, which was a new experience. It was not like being on a NYC sidewalk! To tell the truth, I felt unsafe—the loneliness with the wind blowing through a vast expanse of grass gave me the sense I was in a place not entirely known. One can easily get lost there. I knew I would never find the stone cottage as it was far away in a different part of the moors (and in Emily’s mind!). (Photo of Stephanie Cowell by Jesse.)

Was your publishing experience for this book as hard as it was for the Brontës!?

I returned to Regal (House Publishing). They had just published The Boy in the Rain for me, after my having had a great deal of trouble finding a publisher for that book. I was delighted with them, but when I finished this book, I thought maybe I could see if there is a larger publisher who might be interested. I tried a few agents, but as usual they said, “how beautifully you write, but no thank you.” (I have never quite understand how those two statements go together!) So I asked Regal if they would like this book, because by then I had decided I wanted to approach a house who I knew and who liked my work. My editor read it in two days and told me, “I love it!” It is nice to feel the strength of my publisher behind me.

Is there a book you have read recently you could recommend to HNS members?

Behold the Bird in Flight, a debut novel by Teri Lewis. It’s a wonderful, marvelous psychological portrait of King John’s French queen, Isabelle d’Angouleme.

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