Jean-Pierre Ohl

"Une si dévorante soif de voir, de connaître, d'apprendre". Les soeurs Brontë... Ce pluriel, depuis un siècle et demi, fascine. Quand Emily écrit Les Hauts de Hurlevent, Anne publie La Recluse de Wildfell Hall, et Charlotte Jane Eyre. La première meurt à trente ans, en 1848 ; la deuxième à vingt-neuf, un an plus tard ; la troisième à trente-neuf, en 1855. Sans oublier Branwell, le frère écrivain maudit, qui disparaît lui aussi prématurément, miné par l'alcool et la tuberculose. Tous quatre étaient orphelins de mère. Quelle probabilité y avait-il pour que tous ces talents si originaux poussent ainsi à l'ombre du presbytère de Haworth ? Faute de pouvoir éclaircir totalement ce mystère, Jean-Pierre Ohl tente d'en dessiner les contours, et de comprendre ce qui, aujourd'hui encore, rend si proches de nous les enfants du pasteur Patrick Brontë.

Les Brontë

Charles Dickens

Christine Donougher

'Mr Dick, or, The Tenth Book' is an exhilirating entertainment, a homage to Charles Dickens and to the creative power of literature to animate and illuminate our lives.

Mister Dick, Or, The Tenth Book

While draining a pond during work for the construction of the Stockton to Darlington Railway George Stephenson's workers discover a female corpse with a dagger stuck between her ribs—could it be that of Lady Beresford, the French wife of a local baron who disappeared under mysterious circumstances twenty years ago? The identity of the victim is at the heart of Jean-Pierre Ohl's novel, a richly woven tapestry set during the rise of capitalism in England. The Devil's Road has a Dickensian range of characters from the indolent liberal lawyer Bailey, with a taste for Byron's poems and madeira wine, his imperturbable clerk Snegg, the activist worker Davies and the 'Corporal', a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and demonstrator wounded at the Peterloo Massacre—there is even a role for the young Charles Dickens working in the blacking warehouse.

The Devil's Road

Mike Mitchell

Mary Guthrie, a student of English at Edinburgh University becomes fascinated by the fantastical 17th century writer, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and sets out to write a thesis on him. She pursues her research in his ancestral home, Cromarty House, now a crumbling ruin. There under the current laird, Sir James she is drawn into an increasingly Gothic exploration of the history of the eccentric Urquharts and the maze of tunnels beneath the House. The Catholic priest of her parish, Ebenezer Krook, to whom she loses her virginity, is a distant and illegitimate descendant of Urquhart. He renounces his calling and goes to Edinburgh, where he is taken on by an idiosyncratic bookseller. Subconsciously he is searching for his father, who disappeared in the Spanish Civil War, leaving him with little more than a book and the memory of a boat trip to the Corryvreckan whirlpool, which allows for a cameo appearance by George Orwell. The novel captures the charm and atmosphere of Edinburgh and rural Scotland. Like Jean-Pierre Ohl's first novel, Mr Dick or The Tenth Book, this book will appeal to readers who like clever and unusual mysteries, where past and present, fact and fiction are ingeniously merged together.

The Lairds of Cromarty

Dire que la popularité de Charles Dickens (1812-1870) fut immense est un euphémisme. Tout le monde le lisait: la Reine et ses ministres, le petit peuple et la gentry, toute l’Angleterre en somme, mais aussi les Français, les Américains, les Allemands, les Russes. Pour trouver un équivalent français à sa gloire, il faudrait additionner celle de Balzac et de Hugo, de Zola et de Dumas. Et encore échouerait-on à saisir le tacite plébiscite en vertu duquel il devint, malgré les critiques féroces que lui inspiraient bien des coutumes et des institutions de son pays, le chantre de tout un peuple. Raconter sa vie, c’est à la fois pénétrer les arcanes d’un créateur incomparable et tenter de comprendre comment les fantasmagories d’un fils de modeste fonctionnaire de province ont pu trouver pareil écho. C’est aussi aller à la rencontre d’une personnalité complexe, protéiforme, pétrie de contradictions encombrantes, mais toujours animée d’une infatigable énergie.

Jean-Pierre Ohl

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