From Updike to Britten

Sam Tanenhaus discusses John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick in the New York Times and quotes the author as saying:

Amid all this, witchcraft seems simply another ideology, potentially the basis for a reinterpretation of the human and natural world. Updike makes good sport throughout of pseudofeminist cant. But he is also a master of omniscient sympathy, and gradually the witches’ conviction that they “could move the material world with sympathetic magic” achieves the completeness of a plausible worldview, one that seeps into the broader ethos of Eastwick. “Insofar as they were witches, they were phantoms in the communal mind,” Updike writes. They earn respect for “a certain distinction, an inner boiling such as had in other cloistral towns produced Emily Dickinson’s verses and Emily Brontë’s inspired novel.”

The Sunday Times talks about the US release of Mary Ann Shaffer’s novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:

When soldiers intercept a group of friends heading home from an illegal pig roast, the heroine, Elizabeth, invents the Guernsey Literary Society, claiming that it meets only to read books by the Brontës and to pore over recipes, including one for potato peel pie. (John Harlow)

We are afraid that that is not quite what really happens in the book. Some other book club readers of Valerie Martin's Trespass discuss the novel in The Mercury News. One of them is particularly perceptive with the Wuthering Heights connection:

"At first, Chloe's last work in progress, the illustrated 'Wuthering Heights' seemed out of place in this novel. However, "Wuthering Heights" is a story about pairs and a study in contrasts. The two houses in Bronte's masterpiece are quite different. The calm, systematic Grange (Chloe) counterpoints perfectly with the wild Wuthering Heights (Salome)." — Evy Cambridge, Soquel

The novel is summarised in this other article in the Marin Independent Journal and the Contra Costa Times:

"Trespass" is layered with stories from her array of contrasting characters. Chloe's son Toby, who gives up hispromising education for love; Salome, who fled Croatia as a child, settling with her father and brother in Louisiana; Salome's mother, believed to be dead but actually living in Italy with her horrific memories; Chloe's husband, Brendan, who for years has been writing a book on dead kings; and Chloe, an artist, painstakingly etching illustrations for "Wuthering Heights," tormented by the poacher on her property and the poacher of her son's love. (Lynn Carey)

'Trespass," by Valerie Martin, turned out to contain a lot to talk about. There was the story of a mom who disliked her son's girlfriend, a Croatian immigrant. There was a poacher on the property, another immigrant. There was the story within the story of a woman's horrific escape from Croatia and her torture by the Serbs. There were dead kings during the time of the Crusades. There was even an appearance by Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights." (Lynn Carey)

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo in its Travel section carries an article about Yorkshire with plenty of mentions of the Brontës and Haworth. Not a surprise as the author is Espido Freire who some years ago wrote Querida Jane, querida Charlotte. The Czech press talks about next year's adaptation of Jane Eyre (Jana Eyrová) at the Divadlo ABC theatre.

The German Sueddeutsche reviews a recent performance of Benjamin Britten's cantata The Company of Heaven. For more information about the connections between this piece and Emily Brontë's poetry read this previous post. Finally, MissionVerdopolitian has uploaded a new youtube video (The Poetaster).

Categories: Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre