Thornfield Hall and Mr Rochester got under my skin

The Jacket Copy column of Los Angeles Times contains a story particularly interesting for the readers of this blog:

THE Dublin-based literary magazine the Stinging Fly was founded in 1997 as a venue for new writers from Ireland and around the world. The winter issue, just out, boasts seven pieces of fiction set in such far-flung locales as Los Angeles and Donegal (who says relative location isn't everything?), as well as works by 16 poets and a quartet of book reviews.
Also in the issue is a piece by London literary agent Lucy Luck that details the pleasure she found in reading as a child. Her sense of joy quickly dissipated when she entered secondary school and was subjected to the "reading of 'proper books.' This was very different from the stories I'd been loving -- these were books read for instruction, so that essays could be written. It was all a bit like hard work."
Luckily, "Jane Eyre" got under her skin, and her enthusiasm was rekindled. "Now the written word defines much of my day," she continues, confessing: "Though there is nothing to compare to the thrill of being the first to appreciate a new literary talent, it can be exhausting to only read unpublished books when there are still so many published ones I've not managed to start." (Jacket Copy)

You can read the complete article in the Winter 2007-08 issue of Stinging Fly. The relevant fragment reads:

It was all a bit like hard work. That is, until I was made to read Jane Eyre. I had started out bored by this insipid, irritatingly plain and correct girl, and it was all very old-fashioned. But Thornfield Hall and Mr Rochester got under my skin, and I found myself reading late at night to find how it would end. Once I finished the novel, I reread it, and then I read it again. (Lucy Luck)

Categories: Jane Eyre, Journals