The case of the missing ending

Let's start with good news for the Taiwanese Jane Eyre/Brontë fans. Moments of Being announces that Jane Eyre 2006 will be broadcast on PTS from July 2 through July 5. (Do check it out for other costume dramas scheduled for the summer in Taiwan.)

It's aways such a pleasure to find accurate, to-the-point Brontë mentions! And it looks like fans of The Sopranos tend to be also interested in the Brontës. Already a few days ago we posted about the ending of The Sopranos compared to the ending of Villette. Today The New York Times comments on it too.

To the idea of irresolution — the idea of life as a plot that goes on and on and then stops, still in medias res — the “Sopranos” ending added ambiguity, another time-honored convention. It’s the principle behind the ending of Charlotte Brontë’s “Villette,” to take one of many examples, which she rewrote at the urging of her father so that it’s left for the reader to decide whether or not the heroine’s true love, M. Paul, dies in a shipwreck. (Charles McGrath)

We haven't seen this episode - or much of The Sopranos TV series for that matter - so we can't comment on it. But from what we read it does look like a good comparison. And we are thrilled that journalist relayed the story correctly.

And to finish with what looks like our TV newsround. All CD Covers posts a brief synopsis of Sparkhouse (a modern retelling of Wuthering Heights) as well as the sleeve and disk artwork.

Last month we reported the re-release of the Wind and Wuthering album by Genesis. Today we find it reviewed - in Spanish - on El Insolenterotordinario with the 'obligatory' mentions of Wuthering Heights.

An alert for tomorrow, June 18, from Tracy, California:

Book club
A women’s book club will have its inaugural meeting Monday at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 1635 Chester Drive. The first book the club will discuss is “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. (Tracy Press)

And lastly an interesting review from Mystery File. The object of the review is Robert Barnard's The Case of the Missing Brontë.

I’ll start at the beginning, which is very, very funny, with the Trethowan family (one son) on a short summer holiday and stopping for a short respite in a small Yorkshire village, in which mother and father meet an old woman in a pub with a story: a find that she had made in some old family papers.
Could it be the manuscript of a never-published Emily Brontë novel? The Trethowans are quickly convinced, but so are other members of Miss Edith Wing’s family (distant relatives) and assorted thugs and academics – don’t be concerned; it’s easy to tell them apart, most of the time. The academics are simply thuggish in more refined ways.
When Edith Wing is knocked on the head and the papers stolen, Trethowan has a case on his hands officially, but why Scotland Yard allows such a leisurely investigation to occur on such a minor matter is a (shall we say) a mystery. But we (the reader) are thankful that they do, as the resulting novel is small marvel of small town japery and incisive cultural commentary, British style, through and through. (Steve)

Aren't you tempted to read it now? Along with the review, several of the covers of the book, which was first published back in 1983, can be seen.

Let it be said too that Robert Barnard knows his Brontës and was actually chairman of the Brontë Society in the past.

Categories: Alert, Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Villette, Wuthering Heights