Leaving Charlotte behind on the train

Variety uses Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights as an example of 'how European cinema is learning to live without the U.S.':

Since Ecosse Films started developing its new adaptation of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" a few years back, Natalie Portman, Abbie Cornish and Gemma Arterton have been touted at various times for the lead role.
But when Andrea Arnold signed up to direct, she was given free rein to cast teenage unknowns. With the U.S. pre-sales market all but closed to European projects, there was no longer any point in trying to tailor the casting to the tastes of American buyers. The producers relied instead on the cachet of Arnold's name on the European arthouse circuit to finance the project out of Europe.
That's a striking example of how the shrinkage of U.S. specialty distribution is changing European cinema. The days when an ambitious producer's first thought was to tempt Miramax or New Line are gone. Instead, they are retreating to their own domestic markets, or looking to co-productions or pre-sales from neighboring countries to support larger budgets.
"The U.S. is now worth exactly the same as the Philippines, but at least you know you'll get a deal out of the Philippines," quips Paul Brett of Prescience Film Finance. "The U.S. market used to be worth 40%, but now it has to be discounted to zero." (Adam Dawtrey)

Still, though, there's the question of whether/how the closing of the UK Film Council will affect Andrea Arnold's project.

Speaking of adapting Wuthering Heights, The Morning Call interviews one of its readers who, when asked about the 'worst movie version of a book', replies, 'Probably Wuthering Heights'. What we don't know is which specific version he is thinking of. Perhaps Andrea Arnold's will make him change his mind in the future?

Alison Flood has written an article on 'the books that send me back to school' for the Guardian Books Blog.

Golding and my thieving tendencies aside, Jane Eyre bored me, King Lear enthralled me, and I described Romeo and Juliet in my mock GSCE as a novel – so something clearly went wrong there (thankfully I'd got the right end of the stick by the time the real thing came around). But the other book which really stands out in my memory from schooldays is Wuthering Heights. I was on to A-levels by then, but for some reason we were still going through the purgatory of reading (droning) aloud in class – possibly one of the best ways to make a group of teenagers lose interest in a novel. I was lazy, more interested in messing around than working, but I was so caught up in the melodramas of Cathy and Heathcliff ("Do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!") that I'd be pages ahead when it came to my turn to read and would get in trouble for not concentrating. And I distinctly remember spending a break time racing to the end.

More books, as Organiser reviews Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow:

The Taste of Sorrow is a fictionalised account of the Brontës and their extraordinarily talented children, whose short and sheltered lives have fascinated people the world over. After the death of their mother, they are taken care of by their nurses and their aunt, who recognises the talent of the girls, but does not want them "grow up thinking themselves in any way exceptional." Their father’s eagerness to send them to school proves fatal for Maria and Elizabeth; sick and weak, they are sent back from there to die in their home. The remaining three sisters go to another school. Then they take up jobs for a while, toy with the idea of starting their own school, for which they make a trip to Brussels, but eventually decide to stay home, where they keep themselves busy inventing stories about imaginary people and places.
Although their father, like many other celebrities of the day, does not associate writing with women, the sisters persist in their efforts to write and get a volume of their poems published under male names: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Soon they write novels, too, which are well received. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre earns the praise of Thackeray. Emily and Anne write Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. At the height of their powers, the younger sisters, Emily and Anne are dogged by ill health and consumed by death. Their only brother changes several jobs, falls in love with a married woman, takes to drinking, suffers mental anguish, loses control over his nerves, and dies in the arms of his disturbed father.
Left alone with her father, Charlotte is befriended by her father’s assistant, Nichollas [sic], whom she eventually marries. They go to Ireland where, sitting by the sea, in "the shriek of the wind and the thunder of the surf," she hears "the lost voices coming through." Morgan ends the book with these words, but states in the author’s note that within a year of her marriage, Charlotte died at the age of thirty-eight.
The Taste of Sorrow is a moving and powerful narrative. (Tej N Dhar)

The Financial Times reviews another book, The Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke, whose beginning is said to be somewhat reminiscent of the Brontës.

The action opens on the moors at the remote, Brontë-esque grange of High Sugden with the dying patriarch Hal Brigshaw beseeching the narrator, Martin Crowther, to visit his estranged son and daughter in Italy and persuade them to return home one last time. (Ian Irvine)

And finally, this is how the Boston Herald begins an article on the objects stored at one of the MBTA's (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) lost-and-found offices:

To the Charlotte Bronte reader who left behind a pricey Amazon Kindle aboard a Stoughton train last month, please go to the “Lost and Found” at South Station. (Richard Weir)

There is an accompanying photo of the lost Kindle and its Charlotte Brontë image.

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