Enthralling Jane

The Borehamwood Times interviews Laura Turner from the Hull Truck Theatre company, currently on tour in the UK with Jane Eyre.

“There’s something so completely enthralling about Jane,“ says Laura Turner, who had the job of adapting it for the stage. “She’s such a fascinatingly complex character, so full of contradictions in her dreams and ambitions.“
Laura has put Jane firmly at the centre of her unique adaptation. “The thing that really struck me was that it feels so much like a story about creativity,“ she says, “about writing, imaging, remembering and dreaming. Jane is a very self-conscious narrator – ‘Reader, I married him’ is one of literature’s most famous lines – but other adaptations tend to focus on capturing the various elements of the story itself – the gothic mystery, the passionate love affair with Rochester, the horror of the mad woman in the attic – at the expense of Jane’s imagination. So in this adaptation the world of the play becomes Jane’s memory and her imagination.“ [...]
Did the fact that the story is so well-known impact on how Laura approached the writing of it? “There’s always a certain amount of pressure working on a text like this,“ she admits, “and possibly none more so than the pressure I put on myself to do justice to it! Something I’ve realised during this project is that you have to be brave enough to put the book aside and trust your instincts with the story.“ (Rosy Moorhead)

Joe Queenan doesn't sound like a fan of Wuthering Heights, according to his words in the Mail & Guardian:

It’s good to get the youth reading, but it’s going to be difficult if high school reading lists feature books like Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. About this, he argues: “For decades, well-meaning pedagogues have been sabotaging summer vacations by forcing high school kids to read novels like Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, The Red Badge of Courage and The Grapes of Wrath. These books may be the cornerstone of our civilization, but they are certainly no fun. One reason the average American reads no more than four books a year may be the emotional trauma suffered while trying to hack his way through Wuthering Heights at age 14.” (Percy Zvomuya)

Joan Wickersham from the Boston Globe doesn't like it either as she considers it a book 'you'll want to toss' out of the window.

The Cabinet Press has a column by a local librarian on books and films.

As the saying goes, the book is always better than the movie. I’ll withhold judgment on whether or not the films vying for Best Picture this year live up to the books upon which they are based. That said, it’s relatively rare – though not uncommon – that a film is equally as good as its book: “The House of Sand and Fog” (Andre Dubus); “Mystic River” (Dennis Lehane); “The English Patient” (Michael Ondaatje); “Misery” and “Stand by Me” (Stephen King); “The Age of Innocence” (Edith Wharton) and the original “Wuthering Heights” (Emily Bronte) all come to mind as films doing justice to their novel counterparts. (Michelle Sampson)

This is how the Wall Street Journal describes the 'most fanatic Janeites':

[They] don't just read the novels once and move on to the Brontës. They reread them constantly and devour all the movies and fictional spinoffs. (Alexandra Alter)

The Telegraph reviews The Engagement by Chloe Hooper:

It’s a book of coercion and sexual games, fantasy and, yes, feminism, for those who prefer their erotic literature less Fifty Shades of Grey, more Jane Eyre, as Hooper piercingly analyses the ideal of marriage in contemporary society. (Catherine Taylor)

Now here's something new. Actual bats likened to Heathcliff on Science Daily.

Male bats were mostly restricted to a windier, Heathcliff-like existence in roosts at the top of the Dales.

The Hackensack Books Examiner chooses Jane Eyre as 'the eighth book in Children’s Classics month'. A reader has written to The Telegraph and Argus about Haworth's clamper quoting from a hymn by Anne Brontë. Heavenali posts about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Dans ma bulle livresque writes in French about Wuthering Heights and Shylock Books reviews April Lindner's modern take on the novel, Catherine. Reading Against the Clock will be reading most of the Brontës' work.

Finally, don't miss the new 'behind-the-scenes peeps' at the ongoing redecoration of the Brontë Parsonage on the Museum's Facebook page.