Wuthering Heights is not for the sleep-deprived

Time Out London publishes an interesting article where Justine Picardie guides us through some of the London sights related to Daphne du Maurier's childhood:

Cleverly, Picardie builds this disjunction into her potent, pulse-quickening novel, which works both as homage and as a distillation of a longstanding obsession. One half, set in the present day, tracks the intellectual oppression by her academic husband of a young student as she attempts to write a PhD on Daphne. The other is a fictionalised biography of the novelist which pivots on a particularly dramatic point in her life. 'In 1957, Daphne was close to a breakdown,' Picardie explains. "Her husband, Tommy, had actually had a breakdown and was also having an affair, and I found a reference in a letter to her feeling as if she was being haunted by the ghost of Rebecca.' In a bid to stabilise herself, Daphne threw herself into researching a biography of Branwell Brontë, determined to give the drunken wastrel the credit she felt had been denied him by scholars. To do this, she enlisted the help of a man called Symington, a Brontë expert of dubious repute (though she wasn't to know this).
It was to Symington that Daphne dedicated the finished book. 'The InfernalWorld of Branwell Brontë'. Picardie's interest in their relationship was triggered when Virago asked her to write the introduction to a new edition and she uncovered details of the pair's correspondence.'I thought: What was she doing writing to Symington in the midst of this great personal crisis? Were they having an affair? Were they in love?' (John O'Connell)

Thanks to Justine Picardie, who forwarded us the article.

Do you remember the concert by Red {an orchestra} in Cleveland wich had to feature fragments from Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera and was finally cancelled due to the weather conditions? It looks like that cancellation has marked the very end of the Red Orchestra. No chances of a reschedule:

The cancelled concerts on March 7th and 8th at Kent State University and Cleveland's Masonic Auditorium were going to celebrate the works of Bernard Herrman, composer of the infamous theme from the movie Psycho and other film scores such as Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane, and the Wuthering Heights opera. With the cancellation of these events and the obligation to reimburse the ticket revenue from the concerts, the orchestra was unable to financially support any future events. (Laura Krawcyk in The Cauldron)

Parenting.com via CNN shows how Wuthering Heights probably is not a good read if you are nursing a child:

Just to survive, I adopted the whole sleep-when-the-baby-sleeps thing as my mantra. In a temporary burst of hopefulness, I did take a stab at "Wuthering Heights" early on, but after rereading the first four pages of it for the third time, I gave up, so muddled by sleep deprivation that I couldn't tell one character from another, much less figure out what was happening on the dark moors of England. (Margaret Renkl)

wordnerdy briefly reviews Laura Joh Rowland's The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë:

This would be a much better book if it didn't involve the Bronte sisters--if it was just a tale of a woman caught up in international intrigue etc. Instead, it required serious suspension of disbelief to buy the Brontes getting into such scrapes; my suspension of disbelief ended completely during a ridiculous scene where Charlotte dry-humps her love interest. No, really. (alicia k)

More readers that have discovered Jane Eyre: Butterfly, would you pretend to love me back. Litterature audio posts a free French reading of the novel by Chantal Magnat, Rio publishes an extensive biography of Charlotte Brontë in Italian. Wide Sargasso Sea is the subject of a couple of posts by Sarah's Blog and My Stage.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Jane Eyre, Opera, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights