Match a Rochester

Helen Dunmore reviews for The Guardian the new Stevie Davis book, The Awakening:

Like Charlotte Brontë in Shirley, Davies is funny and perceptive about the clergymen who flock around the sisters, and her social comedy breathes life into an oppressive world. She is lyrical and pitiless in her dissection of religious zeal. Awakening burns with anger against the abuses of the past, while recognising that the present has no right to condescend. 

Kate Mosse discusses in The Guardian her personal experience in literature:

I inherited from my Dad a love of good old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure stories. Little Women and Wuthering Heights sat cheek by jowl on my teenage bookshelf with King Solomon's Mines, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Treasure Island. (...)
When I began to write, I looked to the sorts of novels I'd loved when I was growing up for inspiration: the dominating landscapes of Willa Cather and Emily Brontë, the quests of Rider Haggard and Jules Verne and Walter Scott.

The Boston Globe interviews screeenwriter Jerusha Hess:

Her taste in movies is closer to “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” than to literary adaptations, but Hess claims she’s a fan of Austen, the Brontë sisters, et. al. “I love good girl Brit lit. It’s what my mother fed me my whole life. She didn’t tell me about the birds and bees,” says Hess. “She gave me [Thomas Hardy’s] ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles.’” (Loren King)

The Sunday Times talks about two of the main Brontë topics this week. Bridget Christie sketch at the Edinburgh Fringe:

Her set piece on the Brontës flailing hopelessly at their manuscripts, unable to shape plot and character with man-pens in their women's hands, bubbles with mischief. (Stephen Armstrong) 

And the Shanghai Ballet Jane Eyre performances in London:

The ballet's action is overcomplex, mingling the real, the imagined and the symbolic. (...) But the plot is cluttered with peripheral characters, and the recorded music offers no unity, a mishmash of Elgar, Britten, Debussy, Barber, Dowland, even Greensleeves: it's a distracting case of spot the tune. The climax of the piece, with the three leads as angels in underwear, strains credulity. (David Dougill)

Rachel Spangler, author of lesbian romance novels, talks to The Observer (Dunkirk):

"I don't know that my books are more than romance, so much as they are more than people's stereotypes of romance," she says. "The genre has gotten a bad rap in recent years, but some of the world's most cherished books are romances. Jane Austen wrote romances. So did Charlotte Brontë. These weren't just frivolous stories: They spoke to the real issues facing real women, and I hope that's what my work does, too."

Greater Kashmir talks about the power of stories:

The orphan child Heathcliff of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a character who is apparently full of vengeance and sinister designs, but deep inside harbors heroic virtues as well. The duality of his persona and transformation from clumsy poor to a rich gentleman leaves the readers baffled. He is an embodiment of paradox, like many of us in this world whose repulsive layers of contradictions are wrapped by the wonderful façade.¨

The Independent reviews San Miguel by T.C. Boyle:

 What looks at first like an homage to Wuthering Heights – an unsympathetic husband, a sickly wife, hostile terrain, then an unhappy second generation where sheer loneliness brings people together – swerves halfway through to give us something different altogether. (Lesley McDowell)

FemaleFirst interviews the writer Shelagh Mazey:

Who are your favourite reads?
I have always loved the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy, but also modern day writers like Margaret Dickinson and Catherine Cookson. (Lucy Walton)

Ok... this is one of the weirdest Brontë references we have seen in quite some time. From PRWeb:

The classical loving words still touched our hearts even if it has been more than 150 years since the publication of Jane Eyre.
“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
We can obviously observe that Jane stressed the spiritual equality between her and Edward Rochester when they fell in love. But why she said that? She is neither rich nor pretty, while Edward Rochester is a single millionaire who is perfect for dating in modern words. The disparity of wealth is the main cause of the psychological distance between them. Mr. Rochester never thought Jane was ugly and poor, but Jane herself and other people did. This psychological distance is more like a barrier that the non-millionaire part feels humble and unequal. While that feeling is hard to be understood by the millionaire part. So spiritual equality should be considered if you want to date a millionaire either on a millionaire dating site like MillionaireMatch.com or in real life.

The (in)famous Charlotte Brontë words about Pride and Prejudice are quoted once again in The Independent (Ireland); Agora Magazine (Italy) has an article on Wuthering Heights; The Republican Massachussetts reviews a recent Boston Pops concert conducted by John Williams where Alfred Newman's Wuthering Heights was played; The Book Cellar interviews Alison Croggon, author of Black Spring.