R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on the BBC TV series The Line of Beauty, based on the book of the same name by Alan Hollinghurst. Apparently, when the author of a book is still alive you have to be more careful with what you do to their work.

Stevens re-read the book five times. [...]
"I wouldn't necessarily do it for every adaptation but I think it was useful in this case. With this, they complemented each other and it was such a beautiful, complex book. I wanted to be very faithful to it, especially as Alan was still alive. It's not like Dickens or Bronte." (Michael Idato)

This half of BrontëBlog thinks it's a very positive thing for an actor to say as it shows respect for the author, but said author should be respected regardless of whether he's dead or alive. We don't like to think that - had he been playing the Brontës - he wouldn't have paid any attention to what the author had written. Perhaps that's the problem with current adaptations which go awry, the fact that respect is not part of them because the author can't raise an eyebrow.

Publishers Weekly reviews The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey (to be released in May), which is apparently somewhat reminiscent of Jane Eyre.

The second section, set during Dara’s childhood, is narrated by Dara’s father, who has a strange fascination with Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and shares Dodgson’s creepy interest in young girls. Dara’s meeting with Edward dominates part three, which mirrors the plot of Jane Eyre, and the final part, reminiscent of Great Expectations, is told mainly from Abigail’s college-era point of view.

I Want to Suck Your Blood Has been rereading Wuthering Heights and writes a lengthy post on the book. Pensamentos de uma batata transgênica writes about several film adaptations of Jane Eyre in Portuguese. And finally, Hayden Thorne reviews The Master of Seacliff by Max Pierce.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights