Unreliable narrators and other news

Reuters interviews author Lynn Cullen who reveals her influences:

Q: What might surprise readers about Sofonisba [in her new book The Creation of Eve]?
A: "I look at Sofi as an unreliable narrator. That's one of the big points of the book -- you see things, you interpret it in your way, but it might be the wrong way.
"I was heavily influenced by "Wuthering Heights" because there's an unreliable narrator in that. I read it several times as I was writing this book. I love the idea that as a reader you're fed information, just as in real life. You get certain information and you can only process what you see, but there might be other things to it. (Chelsea Emery)

As we discovered some time ago, the film The Wolfman was also influenced by Wuthering Heights, or so reviewers said. A short notice in US Magazine is no exception:

In this moody period horror movie -- a cross between Wuthering Heights and Twilight -- a Victorian damsel (Emily Blunt) learns that an unseen assailant has mauled her beloved. . .

The Sydney Morning Herald has a long article on Hyperemesis Gravidarum, the illness most likely to have killed Charlotte Brontë.

English novelist Charlotte Brontë died an awful death in 1855. Faint, exhausted and a slave to incessant nausea and vomiting for months, the fragile writer was unable to stomach food and water despite wearily trying to summon strength.
Dehydrated and delirious, with no modern medicine to save her, Brontë died while four months' pregnant from the effects of an illness still inflicting misery on pregnant women - hyperemesis gravidarum - excessive, persistent vomiting and nausea which can linger for an entire pregnancy. It drives some women to terminate.
"A wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks," a friend of Brontë's is reported to have said. (Linda McSweeny)

It is all quite accurate (except for the 'four-month' figure - it is actually not known as there are even theories pointing to Charlotte dying of other causes) and the article finishes by quoting from Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, even.

And the time for summer reading lists has officially started. From the Midland-Reporter Telegram:

Hastings also has started its summer book club, offering discounts to readers who finish six books.
Its reading journal suggests titles including "Dork Diaries," "Tales from Odyssey" and classics like "Jane Eyre" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." (Kathleen Thurber)

On the blogosphere, Readin' and Dreamin' posts about Shirley, Scriptural writes about Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia in French, Lit Craze discusses Rochester in Jane Eyre, Book Eater has watched the MTV's Wuthering Heights and Aneca's World reviews Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth. Les Brontë à Paris posts about Emily's stay in Law Hill (in French). Finally, Helen Highwater takes a (hilarious) look at DVD covers of Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights