The second and final novel of Anne Brontë, the youngest of the Brontë sisters, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is not my favorite Brontë book, but has a lot to like. It is easy to see Anne reacting to criticism of her first novel, Agnes Grey as being too short and moralistic, along with the influence of the nested narration of her sister Emily's Wuthering Heights and the runaway success of the complicated romance in her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre.

A beautiful young widow and her young son move into a long abandoned manor house in the neighborhood of our narrator, Gilbert Markham, who is telling us this story in the form of a (VERY LONG) series of letters to his friend. Helen Graham is secretive and mysterious and Gilbert is very smitten. The neighbors, however, soon start gossiping about her relationship with her landlord and the lack of information about her origins. Helen decides to give Gilbert her (VERY LONG) diaries that explain everything, and they make up a big chunk of the novel. Things swing back and forth and Anne keeps us on the hook until the very end to learn if the romance can work out. Gilbert is a truly goofy and not very likeable dude, and Anne's sense of humor really runs wild in showing us his personality. As we learn more about Helen, we are pulled into a world of alcoholism, mental illness, debauchery, and bad decisions. At the time of publication, the Victorian reading public was scandalized by the frank look at the darker side of society, but Anne came by her knowledge through the sad reality of her brother, who was an opium addict and alcoholic with some mental health issues. The scenes between Helen and her husband are pretty brutal when you think of their inspiration.

Anne and Emily both had a rather fly-by-night publisher and this book in particular could have benefitted from the more professional editor/publisher that Charlotte worked with. The pacing is inconsistent and Anne's moral lessons and religious teachings are sometimes shoehorned in awkwardly, and her humor (one of her best points) often gets drowned in the text. She also doesn't have Emily's deftness with nested and unreliable narrators. Still, this is a worthwhile read as a companion to Agnes Grey and her sisters' novels.