Use the Brontës

No big news today, but some interesting tidbits and comments around:

The Brontës are often used on the media as some sort of literary metaphoric standard in lots of situations: Do you want to point out that nowadays children don't read classics? Use the Brontës:

A recent Chapters/Indigo "reader's choice" poll of parents to determine their favourite works for children yielded a number not normally regarded as children's books, certainly not exclusively as children's books: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, Robinson Crusoe, Jane Eyre. Classics all (but where's Oliver Twist?). It's true that I read many of these in childhood, though I can't really see many contemporary kids putting down an Xbox to pick up Charlotte Brontë. (Martin Levin in The Globe and Mail)

Do you want to recommend the best novel to start reading an author (Irene Nemirovsky in this case)? Use Charlotte:

With the Suite Francaise in wide distribution, I can only recommend reading or re-reading that for all but the most devoted Nemirovsky fans. Reading [David Golder] before or instead of the Suite would be like reading Shirley instead of Jane Eyre to get to know Charlotte Bronte. Nonetheless, if you have the time and inclination to get into it, you’ll be treated to a fine portrait of a vicious, animal, yet sympathetic antihero. (Melita Teale in BlogCritics)

The violinist Ikuko Kawai has published a Best Of CD that includes her piece on Wuthering Heights (more information in this old post). The CD (which is also available in a DVD-CD edition) has just been released in Japan with the name: The Violin Muse- The Best of Ikuko Kawai.

Emily Barclay is featured in an article in The Stuff, but nothing new is said about her role as Anne Brontë in the Brontë film project.

Jasper Fforde's fans, like us and many other Brontëites since The Eyre Affair, can read this article in The Times where some writers' websites are discussed.

ASK A FAN OF JASPER FFORDE what reading one of his books is like, and they will frequently talk of getting lost in another world. For a newcomer, a visit to his website has a not dissimilar effect. Like the parallel universe in which Thursday Next, Fforde’s literary detective, solves her crimes, jasperfforde.com is a place where time loses its normal meaning. (Tom Cox)

A new Brontëite to be counted is Margo Rabb, author of Cures for Heartbreak, who is interviewed in Propernoun:

What writers did you read as a teen? Which ones really inspired you? Which ones really influenced you?
I read a lot of Judy Blume, the Brontes, Jane Austen, L. M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood, Agatha Christie, Ellen Raskin, and many others whom I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Finally, a couple of blogs that talk about Jane Eyre, either the original novel as Venture Into Reading or reviewing different movie versions of the novel in Pop Goes the World, ending with an enthusiastic comment on the 2006 BBC version:

What lacked in every single version that I've seen, even the 1997 version was chemistry between the two leads and the Masterpiece Theatre/BBC version has that in spades.

When Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens are on screen together it is electric, I feel their attraction to each other. What is also superior is the fact that there is no narration. All other versions depended on Jane's narration to tell us (the audience) what she is feeling. But the great thing about Ruth Wilson's performance is that we don't need narration to see what she is feeling, we see it on screen. We feel what she feels. Ruth Wilson is the best Jane Eyre (...)

Categories: Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Wuthering Heights