The Bee & The Fly: The Improbable Correspondence of Louisa May Alcott & Emily Dickinson
What if Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson secretly wrote to each other for twenty-five years? In this epistolary novel, the collaborative effort of Lorraine Tosiello and Jane Cavolina, it’s the reclusive Emily who sets the correspondence, and an enduring friendship, in motion in 1861 when she seeks professional advice from Louisa, who has finally experienced a taste of literary success.
Assuming the voice of a renowned author—nay, two renowned authors—is a formidable task, and Tosiello and Cavolina perform it well, evoking the distinct styles of the two subjects and allowing their vastly different, but complementary, personalities to shine through.
Nonetheless, I found this novel lacking somewhat. I wanted the correspondents to tell each other more about the significant events in their lives: Louisa’s stint as a nurse in the Civil War, for instance, is disposed of in just a few short letters. Likewise, I wanted to know more about the women’s relationships with other people: Louisa enthuses about Ladislas Wisniewski throughout one letter, only to never mention him again, and Emily’s friend and possible fiancé Judge Otis Phillips Lord gets short shrift as well. Mabel Loomis Todd, the femme fatale of Amherst, at first appears destined to play an important role in the novel but remains in the shadows. By contrast, the prologue, where a present-day narrator tells us more about herself than we need or care to know, could have been trimmed by half with no harm to the story.
Still, this is an enjoyable novel about female friendship, family, fame (or the lack thereof), and the creative process by coauthors who clearly respect and admire their subjects. As a bonus, a generous selection of Dickinson’s poems is included, and the authors’ note and the end notes offer further illumination.
