Lucy Snow doesn't like you, Reader, doesn't trust you, doesn't conform to expectations or stereotypes and doesn't make anything easy for you. This is a novel crafted with the utmost skill and subtlety, one that makes the reader think and fight for every piece of information. Lucy hints and contradicts at every turn, insists that she is cold and logical at her greatest heights of emotional turmoil and almost never admits the truth of her feelings or tries to explain herself to us. We're left, us pathetic readers, to figure out her world from the clues she gives us and the glimpses of the world we see through her eyes. It's harsh, sad and beautiful and there is no happy ending. If Jane Eyre is a book for high school, Villette is the master class in building an unforgettable psychological novel.