RECURRING CHARACTERS

[Linda]

I always thought it was fun to keep on with the lives of characters that we like, but now I am changing my mind.
There are so many authors that have the same character I am wondering if it is laziness, not wanting or being able to create new ones.
What do you think????

[Suzanne]

I just finished Island Beneath the Sea by Isabelle Allende. This story has similar characters and story line found in Wide Sargasso Seaby Jean Rhys, which in turn is the back story to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I guess during the slave revolt of Saint-Dominique and Jamaica, it was hard not to loose it ... especially if you were a white woman of English upper-class married to an enterprising plantation owner who transplants you to the tropics and then begins an affair with one of the help. All three of these novels have a drastic fire that destroys the main house ... slave uprisings in Rhys and Allende's books and a madwoman's frenzy in Jane Eyre. By the way, Rochester's hidden wife is mad of course in Wide Sargasso Sea too, as is the mistress of the plantation in Island Beneath the Sea.

I like to relate books by similarities and often will read the books posted by readers who enjoyed "like" books if I think the book is exceptional. Then sometimes I make random connections between obscurely-related books.

For example: These books all have a character that had a finger cut off!

Little Bee
Bloodroot
The Snowman

[Linda]

I never made the Little Bee/Bloodroot finger connection. Do not know The Snowman.

[Suzanne]

In The Snowman a police detective (named Harry Hole!)loses his finger when he escapes from a killer's trap while he is trying to rescue his ex-girlfriend. In Little Bee Sara allows the Nigerian soldiers to cut off her finger to save the life of Little Bee. In Bloodroot Myra, who is escaping an abusive marriage, resorts to chopping off John’s finger while he is passed out drunk, to get her ring back.