The Mash-Up: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him

The Mash-Up: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
Linda Grant

A short story by Linda Grant from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.In ‘The Mash Up’, a woman recalls the strain of juggling opposing cultures at her wedding.Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.

The Mash-Up

Linda Grant

A short story from the collection

Copyright (#ulink_5fcd64c7-b5a0-50f5-822d-143e4a4fec15)

Published by The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016

The Mash-Up © Linda Grant 2016

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008150594

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173487

Version: 2016-05-10

Contents

Cover (#u9136de2a-3ef1-50b9-b957-cbb5248dd236)

Title Page (#u4a1f8710-0876-5f6c-8273-3f94895833b7)

Copyright (#u70dfcdf7-1709-5f94-a062-3347efae832f)

Foreword by Tracy Chevalier (#u421775c0-de78-5aff-b882-16670ee7e545)

The Mash-Up – Linda Grant (#ua2d5bc67-c787-5f59-9d61-5485e133e971)

Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)

A Note on Charlotte Brontë (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

FOREWORD BY (#ulink_b7c88a90-0d9c-582a-ba56-7f774a0516ad)TRACY CHEVALIER (#ulink_b7c88a90-0d9c-582a-ba56-7f774a0516ad)

Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?

Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.

Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.

All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.

Tracy Chevalier

THE MASH-UP (#ulink_a8f3436e-ed8d-5790-aa4e-1dc300ed4899)

LINDA GRANT (#ulink_a8f3436e-ed8d-5790-aa4e-1dc300ed4899)

THE WEDDING WAS PERFECT, up to a point.

Because we were what Ali called a mash-up couple, we had to find a way of celebrating our marriage with a nod to both families, a ceremony that would make them feel their traditions were respected and that neither side had the upper hand. These things can turn ugly if not handled properly, with slights and sulks and stormings out and long-borne grievances and grudges stumbling to the surface like aggrieved old drunks. At least on my side of the family. My grandmother has not spoken to my aunt Dolly for forty-three years, since she was not placed at the top table at Elaine’s wedding.

We went online and found a character called Rabbi Larry Peirera. He was prepared to conduct a wedding ceremony of our own devising, like those websites Ali used where you could customise your Nikes. Rabbi Larry, as he told us to call him, was an endearing fellow, a little mushroom of a man with a black boyfriend. When we met with him for the first time, at a bar in Shoreditch, we spent several ice-breaking minutes discussing the symbolism of our three sets of tats and he told us wonderful stories that started funny, and ended in heartbreak, of the long-ago centuries in the Sephardic world where Jews and Muslims lived side by side. “But I’m not a Muslim,” Ali reminded him. “I’m Persian