Bronte Project, The

I was drawn into this book because the opening was an amusing burlesque that resembled my experiences in grad school in the 90s: lonely and uncertain grad students longing for real life and trying to make their literature dissertations "relevant" and "marketable" while a few superstars jet around inexplicably making their mark with kooky, barely literary work on pop culture. The bete noire is a rude, glamorous visiting professor in Madonna Studies.

Alas, the Bronte scholar "heroine" is a whiny cipher with no sense of humor and no particular gumption: we're supposed to take her charisma for granted. Asked to put together a movie script about Charlotte Bronte's life, she can't even come up with anything sexy, but somehow everyone wants her anyway and she becomes embroiled in all the jetsetting stuff in spite of herself. Yawn. Too bad, because the basic idea for the book was entertaining.