Every word counts

The Grand Rapids Press reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre:

“Becoming Jane Eyre” by Sheila Kohler is the newest fictional account of one of the sisters. Kohler offers a spare, yet emotional vision of how Charlotte Brontë came to write “Jane Eyre,” the novel that gave Charlotte the success she craved yet feared. (Read more)
Kohler’s writing is emotional and taut, a case of less is more when it comes to description and drama. Every word counts, so readers must take time and invest their attention to the understated drama of both the book and Charlotte Brontë’s life. But it’s worth this focusing as Kohler brings Charlotte’s life alive with all it pathos and little dramas. Readers will believe what Kohler says because she seems to know the heart of the oldest surviving Bronte sister. (Ann Byle)

Zoë Heller chooses for the Wall Street Journal the Five Best Books on Sisters. Talking about Louisa May Alcott's Little Women:

Louisa May Alcott's novel may not be a great work of literature, but it has proved an enormously influential and salutary text for generations of young girls—as important in its way as "Jane Eyre" or "The Golden Notebook" in shaping ideas about womanhood.

The Ogden Standard-Examiner asks K. Silem Mohammad, associate professor in the English department at Southern Oregon University, about the best zombie movies:

"I Walked with a Zombie" (1943). "It's a personal favorite of mine," Mohammad said. "It's a beautiful, lyrical adaptation of 'Jane Eyre.' It's not really a zombie film, in the contemporary sense of brain-eating ghouls, it's more of a melodrama in which a character is turned into a brain-controlled zombie." (Becky Wright)

According to the Daily KOS, Gordon Brown has a prestigious precedent in the category of political mandatories and Heathcliff-wannabes. No less than Queen Victoria herself:

As a Queen, Victoria fashioned herself after Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s "Wuthering Heights", but I find her more like Lady Honoria from Dickens’ novel "Bleak House"; arrogant, conceited and obsessed with her own reputation. (KAMuston)

nolalibrarian chooses Jane Eyre as one of the ten most influential books on open salon:

2. Jane Eyre. Haven't read it for a while. One of the great feminist statement novels of all time--and really hot. They kiss for the first time and a bolt of lightning strikes the tree they are standing under!

Jane Eyre is around the blogosphere today: Blogging the Canon is reading Jane Eyre and Coltul Colectionarului reviews it in Romanian. Feather Pen and Ink has joined the Brontë-Along project due to her love for Charlotte Brontë's novel. On YouTube there's this speech (with some dramatized reading) about Wuthering Heights by Lindsey Jones, performed at the South Carolina Association of Christian Schools Junior & Senior High Fine Arts Festival.

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