I received a copy of Emily's House by Amy Belding Brown for my birthday in March 2024 and decided I'd read it in my birthday month this year.
A dual narrative novel set in Massachusetts in 1869 & 1916, Emily’s House by Amy Belding Brown is the story of Margaret Maher, Irish maid to Emily Dickinson’s family.
In 1869, Margaret begins working as a live in maid for the Dickinson family, intending to stay a short while before joining her brothers in California. In the brief story arc set in 1916, Margaret reflects on the fate of the Dickinson home long after the death of Emily Dickinson in 1886.
Emily's House is a slow moving character study of Margaret and her relationship with Emily Dickinson in particular. The reader doesn't need to know anything about Emily's life or her poetry but those who do will enjoy an additional layer of understanding in this portrait of her life from Margaret's downstairs perspective.
I haven't read many works set in this time and place, however the author was able to draw me in with descriptions like this one:
"Patrick said he'd found a job with a carpentry crew building a mansion in Northampton... I was just telling him how Henry Paige had had to move his fish market out of Gunn's Hotel because of the stink when the hat factory lunch whistle blew." Page 134I just love thinking about that hat factory lunch whistle. I wonder if factories and manufacturing plants still use a lunch whistle and if not, when was the last one sounded? Whilst that was a clear highlight, overuse of the word 'quare' started grating on my nerves early on - likely part of establishing Margaret as Irish - but thankfully it featured less as the story developed. Emily often mimics Margaret's accent in a condescending fashion and Margaret's struggle with nationality and identity was a continual theme throughout the novel.
"I couldn't think of what to say, so I just stood there like a dolt. I knew she was teasing. But teasing can be a clever mask for cruelty." Page 87Margaret wants to consider herself American but wonders if she's Irish American or whether she'll always be Irish. I'm not sure if Emily Dickinson was known to make fun of the Irish, but as with any fictional imagining of a person's life, I took it with a grain of salt.
In the TV drama series Dickinson, Emily shares a physical relationship with Sue, however here their relationship seems to be that of very close and loving sisters-in-law, but never explicit.
Emily's House by Amy Belding Brown is recommended for readers with an interest in the Dickinson family or those who'd like to read about the life of an Irish lady's maid in America and the plight of the Fenian Brotherhood who fought to achieve Irish independence.
