Let's begin with a couple of recent brief (but good) reviews of Justine Picardie's Daphne. You might be interested in reading our (not-so-brief) review. First, The Financial Times:

One need not be a self-confessed Daphne du Maurier-obsessive like Picardie to enjoy this journey through her troubled later years. With a marriage wracked by affairs on both sides, Daphne retreats to her writing hut to plan a biography of Branwell Bronte. Corresponding with a Bronte scholar with a dark past, she is drawn into a tantalising literary mystery.
Picardie gives the story a contemporary edge by framing it as the research project of a naive young academic, whose marriage to an older man is haunted by his Rebecca of a first wife. Effortlessly overlaying today’s London, Yorkshire and Cornwall with their 1950s incarnations, this novel draws you in to its fraught but passionate world as thoroughly as one of Daphne’s own. (Melissa Katsoulis)

And now The Times:

The main character in this glorious novel is the writer Daphne du Maurier - Picardie has recreated her windswept life on the Cornish coast, and her tottering marriage. While her husband recovers from a mental breakdown, Daphne begins a book about Branwell Brontë. Could he have written some of Emily's poems? Was he the true creator of Heathcliff? This is just one of the literary strands. Meanwhile, in modern London, a modern version of young Mrs de Winter works on her thesis about Daphne du Maurier. A divine treat for lovers of literary mysteries. (Kate Saunders)

Philippa Gregory, author among others of The Other Boleyn Girl, is interviewed in The Yorkshire Post. Can you imagine who her favourite author is:

Name your favourite Yorkshire book/author/artist?
Of course the fantastically talented Brontë family, and I like the work of both Charlotte and Emily Brontë

The Guardian reviews Linda Newbery's Nevermore and introduces the article with the following question (and answer):

What do all these books have in common: Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, Northanger Abbey, Great Expectations, The Woman in White? Answer: a handsome house and an intriguing mystery, if not a secret. (Linda Hoffman)

Another thing that they have in common is that all of them are extraordinary novels, by the way.

On the blogosphere today: Torley Lives posts six fun covers of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. Some very, very weird. Rêves de voyages begins a series of posts about a visit to Haworth and Brontë Country (in French). This Japanese blog comments the film Onimaru (1988), directed by Yoshishige Yoshida and based on Wuthering Heights.

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

Labels: Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Wuthering Heights

Posted by M. on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 11:00 AM | Permalink