You'll enjoy your visits with the Brontë sisters

The Winston-Salem Journal publishes a double review of both Emily's Ghost by Denise Giardina and Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael:

Reading the two books was rather like getting to know real people as you hear others talk about them and gradually become better acquainted with them through your own experience. Different perspectives yield different pictures. I became so intrigued, especially with Emily Brontë, that I am now reading her haunting masterpiece, Wuthering Heights.
Denise Giardina's book is the better of the two, as might be expected from a successful author of several novels, including historical fiction. But Juliet Gael's debut novel is also worth reading, as it enlarges sympathetically upon other, if more familiar, aspects of the sisters' brief lives.
The subtitle for Emily's Ghost says it is "A Novel of The Brontë Sisters," and that is accurate. But this account of the Brontë sisters is purposely different from the standard lore that was handed down to the world. Because Charlotte outlived Emily and Anne, and after their deaths entered more into society, she had control of the family story.
As Giardina says on her website, more recent scholars have "tried to free the Brontë story from Charlotte's grasp and draw upon a variety of sources to enlarge our understanding." She does an excellent job of furthering that aim through her fiction. (Read more) (...)
The main problem with Romancing Miss Brontë is its faithfulness to historical detail. The fictional narrative is at times jarringly interrupted by undiluted exposition. At other times, the book reads like literary analysis, as in this passage discussing the romantic interest that both Charlotte and her brother Branwell had in married people:
"In truth, his (Branwell's) struggle was not any different from Charlotte's: both of them had addled their brains with romantic stories of aristocratic heroes and heroines pining after forbidden love, and both struggled to resign themselves to the fact that life was not going to live up to their dreams. … But we mustn't judge Charlotte and Branwell too harshly for their fantasies. They lived in a time of straitjacket morality when the slightest quiver of the flesh gave cause for outrage. …"
Charlotte Brontë's story, though, like those of her characters and the characters of the other great 19th-century British women, is compelling enough to overcome a few flaws.
Read both books. You'll enjoy your visits with the Brontë sisters. (Linda Brinson)

SFF Media reviews Sherri Browning Erwin's Jane Slayre:

Jane Slayre sticks closely to the plot of Brontë’s novel, with Jane narrating her life from early childhood at Gateshead as the orphaned ward of an abusive aunt. Erwin’s Jane, with her Buffy inspired pun of a surname, is a Slayre and slaying the undead is in her blood. Her cruel aunt is a vampire and really only kept from eating the child through a preference for more aristocratic blood. Life at Gateshead is miserable and pointless until the ghost of Jane’s uncle urges her to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways. (Read more) (...)
For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed Erwin’s novel. Not only is she an accomplished writer, but she demonstrates a good appreciation of Brontë’s novel, a mastery of its language and its aesthetic. For the first hundred or so pages Erwin sustains the novelty and humour of introducing the undead into Brontë’s dignified universe and for a while at least the supernatural is a seamless inclusion in Jane’s world.
But Erwin’s novel is just shy of 400 pages and the weakness of the genre eventually becomes apparent: it’s a one trick pony and the novelty does indeed wear thin. Episodes of the supernatural take on a predictable regularity and begin to feel increasingly as if they’re simply slotted in to Brontë’s novel.
I’m not a fan of the literary mash-up, not because I object to the premise but because there’s not enough scope for ongoing originality once that premise has been established. I’m unlikely to read many more in the genre but I would recommend Sherri Browning Erwin’s Jane Slayre as a great way to enjoy the best the genre currently has on offer. (Gerard Wood)

The Seattle Times reviews Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds and mentions her previous biography of Charlotte Brontë. The Guardian has an article about 'the new face of Brontë': Kaya Scodelario.

Skins actress Kaya Scodelario has landed the part of Cathy in Andrea Arnold's new version of Wuthering Heights. She played Effy in the TV show and will play opposite an unknown Heathcliff – casting calls are going on all over Yorkshire… (Jason Solomons)

We find fitting the following question in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

There are some books that all young people should read before they go out into the world on their own. This past winter I taught a college semester in Creative Writing and was surprised to discover almost half of the class had never read "Wuthering Heights." How could that be? (Ina Hughs)

The Indian Express visited Buxton and was a bit confused:

If the tourist brochures are to be believed, we were in Jane Eyre country and Pride and Prejudice country simultaneously. Mr Rochester could be locking a mad wife in the attic somewhere as Mr Darcy sipped tea with Lady Catherine de Bourgh. On a sunny afternoon, we were in England’s Peak District's largest town—Buxton, which lies at the centre of this web of literary connections. It was here that Izaak Walton fished and wrote The Compleat Angler in the 17th century. To the northeast is Hathersage, home to the Eyre family. Nearby Chatsworth is Jane Austen’s Pemberley. (Nivedita Choudhuri)

Tourist brochures have to be consumed with moderation.

The Barrow Journal goes to Wuthering Heights (of all books!) to make a point about Tipper and Al Gore divorce:

This couple seemed to have held on, to the very end, to what Tipper and Al lost somewhere along the way — the ability to dream the same dream, together, while moving forward in the direction of that dream, however slow the progress. Emily Brontë wrote, “Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” What a lovely way to describe true love, whether it’s found in a homeless shelter and lasts for life or fades away, gradually, in a fine home in Washington, D.C. (Lorin Sinn-Clark)

Kindred Spirits reviews Classical Comics's Jane Eyre Graphic Novel adaptation (in French), Conquering My Library One Book At A Time reviews Wuthering Heights and Pro Se posts a very positive review of Villette.

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