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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Tuesday, December 26, 2006 1:29 pm by M. in , , , ,    No comments
The Boxing Day news come with reviews, Brontëites, books, humour...

The review. The Washington Post reviews John Sutherland's How to Read a Novel. We have already posted about John Sutherland relation with the Brontës and the book also contains some mentions to Jane Eyre.

The Brontëite. The soprano Lisette Oropesa. She is one of the winners of the 2005 Met Auditions and recently made her debut in the Met in Mozart's Idomeneo, re di Creta in a minor role. She is interviewed on Oberon's Grove:
Her favorite...
Book: "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"
Movie: "Also WUTHERING HEIGHTS."
The book. What could be the book/s of the year 2006 ? The Independent asks several critics and authors and the results are here. Of course, Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale is in there, among some others that have been mentioned on this blog.
Scarlett Thomas
If you want rollercoaster prose and a story that feels like it should come with a height-restriction, read Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (Viking).
The House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore (Fig Tree) is a beautifully written meditation on revolution and belonging that's just as compelling as The Siege.

Charlotte Mendelson
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (Orion) was quite the opposite: a colossally enjoyable Brontë-esque bluestocking melodrama.
The sequels. Typos, Gravity and other Mishaps posts about sequels of great novels. The Story of Heathcliff's Journey Back to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire-sargeant is mentioned.
I also tried, ages ago, to read Heathcliff, a sequel of sorts to Wuthering Heights, only it depicted a story that was never told by Brontë. Like The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, it's more about the missing years in Heathcliff's life that we don't know about. Unfortunately, I never got through the book. I couldn't make any sense of this pointed humanisation of Heathcliff. Unfortunately, it more or less just lacks consequence. It's a story that doesn't make much of a difference. While it's believable that this, in fact, is the life that Heathcliff lived in those missing years, does it really matter all that much? It cannot possibly alter the rest of Bronte's tale in any possible way, because Bronte has been smart and already told us what happens next. Besides, Bronte's pretty much even offered the plot, and only the narrative is left for Haire-Sargeant to take over. And the problem is both with the fact that she decides to take it over and with the way she takes it over. (Manasi Subramaniam)
The humour. We have discovered, via springgreen, this story included in the Yuletide 2006 challenge. Jane Eyre meets Pinky and the Brain.
Jane Narf
Fandom: Pinky and the Brain
Written for: shaychana in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge

My name is Jane Narf.

I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. There was no place for the white mouse or the lab rat. I had no father or mother, brother or sister. As a pinky, I was raised by my experimenter, Dr. Reed of Gateshead Labs. I do not remember that he ever spoke one kind word to me, unless you count the word food-pellet, which is really two words, isn't it? Do hyphens count?

I completed my education at Lowood Labs during months that, between my admiration for Miss Phar Fig Newton and the deaths of my fellow students due to dietary and disease-prevention research, were a very interesting passage in my life; alas, this is only a thirty-minute story, so we have to skip something.

Have you ever noticed how long sentences can make your head go swirly-whirley? (Read more)
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