No ladies of chicklit in sight

We have to thank our reader Stephanie once again for reporting yet another forthcoming Jane Eyre-inspired novel.

Edgar-nominated Libby Sternberg's SLOANE HALL, about a chauffeur who falls in love with his starlet employer, only to be repulsed by secrets revealed on their wedding day, a tale inspired by JANE EYRE, to Roz Greenberg at Five Star, for publication 2010. Foreign/film: Holly Root of the Waxman Literary Agency.

Libby Sternberg is an old acquaintance of BrontëBlog. Check these old posts or this other one about this novel formerly known as To Love Faithfully and Well... and Through Nightmare. We are very happy to hear that the novel has finally found a publisher.

Indeed, Mags from Austenblog is right when she states that writers are drifting from Jane Austen towards the Brontës these days.

Anyway, another day dawns on our the-Brontës-are-not-chicklit-or-romance-writers crusade. From MinnPost:

Heather McElhatton and Norah Labiner write novels that land in opposite ends of the fiction marketplace, thanks more to marketing decisions than substantive differences. Stephanie Wilbur Ash chats with both of them to dissect the "chick lit" conundrum. [...]
It has taken Labiner at least five years to write each of her books. Her modus operandi is to extend the lives of other pieces of literature by writing her own works of fiction around them. Words like "classical style" and "experimental" and "prose that summons Marcel Proust and the Bronte Sisters" (arguably the original ladies of chick lit) are peppered throughout reviews of her novels.

Not arguably at all: because they clearly weren't such a thing!

When the Brontës are marketed that way, that leads to what happened to Michelle Kerns from Examiner.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Regular Book Examiner readers know full well that there is no love lost between Wuthering Heights and I (take a look at the 5 most annoying literary romances if you need further evidence). Our animosity is the stuff of legends. I will only say here that I adore everything all the Bronte sisters ever wrote -- except for Wuthering Heights. I actually shouted invectives at the walls when I read this book for the first time: "WHY am I reading this book? THIS is romance?! This woman is a jerk. This man is a jerk. How many pages until I reach the end?" I know you Bronte fans will abhor me for this, but I am only being honest here.

Reading Wuthering Heights from an I-don't-expect-this-to-be-Mills&Boon perspective helps.

In any case, she's not alone disliking the book, as seen on Canada's Here New Brunswick.

I used to hate reading, mostly because it was required in high school and I had zero interest in the reading material. I felt no real connection to Emily Brontë, so I thought I hated reading. One science degree later, I realized that reading is fun if you make it that way. As opposed to Wuthering Heights, I've been reading Bob Dylan's memoirs and semi-philosophical, semi-believable pop culture commentary from Chuck Klosterman. Turns out reading is fun "" you just need to find your niche. I'd suggest trying it this summer. (Josh O'Kane)

That's not the only Here New Brunswick article to focus on summer reading. Here's another:

One bibliophile I spoke with has a line-up of classic women writers she has been planning to get around to "a few Virginia Woolf novels, Jane Austen's Persuasion, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë". (Danny Jacobs)

Another article from the Examiner on Richelle Mead’s Succubus Blues mentions Jane Eyre too:

The reader is simultaneously ecstatic and depressed – this is a love that is so beautiful and pure and it cannot last. It puts one in the mind of Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, other great and saddening love stories. (Kristen Reynolds)

To frame such iconic, controversial, ahead-of-their-times heroines as Tess and Jane in mere saddening - albeit great - love stories is rather belittling.

One more Twilight-Brontë mention for your collection from film.com.

While Bella could have just wandered into her high school right out of a Jane Austen or Bronte sisters' novel, Sookie's [from True Blood] more of a gritty girl. (Susan Young)

Long before Twilight came along, other novels were getting the Brontë comparisons in the reviews. Cinema Spy writes about Shutter Island (check previous posts):

With "Shutter Island", author Dennis Lehane sought to write a novel that would be an homage to Gothic settings, B movies, and pulp. Lehane described the novel as a hybrid of the works of the Brontë sisters and the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (Robert Falconer)

The Telegraph has an article on this painting here (picture source Photo: MERCURY PRESS ) by L S Lowry which is up for auction and said to be inspired by Wuthering Heights.

A Lowry painting inspired by Emily Bronte's gothic love story Wuthering Heights is expected to fetch £180,000 at auction.
L S Lowry painted the picture after the death of his mother and "unselfconsciously" references Bronte's work by using the landscape of the Witherns near Haworth in West Yorkshire.
This location has become intimately tied with the Bronte sisters who were born and brought up in the village of Haworth in the mid-nineteenth century and it is thought that the derelict farmhouse at Top Witherns was the inspiration for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
Matthew Wilcox, a spokesman for Bonhams, said: "Lowry is famed for paintings of the industrial north west, where the crowded scenes portray the sense of loneliness and detachment.
"It is a fascinating contrast therefore to observe his take on a landscape equally bleak for its want of life and vast spaces.
"Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte's definitive work of the Yorkshire moors and the painting captures the desolation and emptiness felt in the book.
"Her line 'In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society' sums it up perfectly.
"It obviously inspired him and it's really interesting to see the contrast to his more conventional work."
The painting, one of four pieces of Lowry's art for sale, will go under the hammer on July 1 at Bonhams New Bond Street Sale of 20th Century Art.

You can take a closer look to the painting at the auctioneers website.

On the blogosphere, Age 30+ ... A Lifetime of Books and ~ JSjujubee ~ both post about Wuthering Heights. Patagonia dreaming writes in Spanish about reading The adventures of Pioneer Women in New Zealand, from their letters, diaries and reminiscences wherein a famous letter from Mary Taylor to Charlotte Brontë (dated 12 April 1850) is quoted.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights