Envious of the Brontës

Dave Astor looks at novels without the basic boy-meets-girl premise in The Huffington Post, though he doesn't forget his Brontëite side.

I'm a big fan of fiction's most romantic works -- whether the romances depicted are happy, sad or illusory. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen's Persuasion, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Erich Maria Remarque's Arch of Triumph, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, Colette's Cheri and so many more. But a terrific novel obviously doesn't need love as its main attraction.

The Daily Mail has a bookish chat with writer Veronica Henry.

[What book] ...LEFT YOU COLD?
It's probably heresy to say it, but I’m not a huge fan of Pride And Prejudice.  I much prefer the sweeping passion and murky secrets of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.  I can appreciate P and P’s merits but I don’t feel envious of Jane Austen’s writing in the way I do of either Brontë’s.  A mad woman in the attic sticks in my mind far longer than a bloke in a wet shirt (yes, I know that was the film ...)

PopMatters reviews Ronald Frame's Havisham.

The tone of Frame’s writing recalls Jean Rhys’s in Wide Sargasso Sea, if more minimalist; both novels eschew the straightforward realism of the original novels in order to capture more vividly the psychic landscape and subsequent breakdown of its central characters. It works, for the most part, but the towards the last quarter of the book, when the timespan of Havisham merges with that of Great Expectations, Catherine starts becoming a caricature of herself. (Subashini Navaratnam)

Inside Higher Ed is missing the point of classic novels adapted as board books for babies and toddlers.

The BabyLit list features Wuthering Heights:A BabyLit Weather Primer (useful, I suppose, if your 8-month-old has shown an interest in moors, climatology or dating ghosts) and Sense and Sensibility: A BabyLit Opposites Primer (although it may still be best to start with “near” and “far”). Really, when an infant cries, he/she is saying “Feed me” or “Change me,” not “Tell me again why Heathcliff is such a tortured soul.” [...]
Can a 1-year-old fully appreciate the complexities of either the marriage plot or Mark Darcy? (For those who agree that Austen might not be quite the thing for babies and toddlers, there is The Jane Eyre Counting Primer; I’m guessing that it must go something like this: “1 Rochester, 2 wives”). (Carolyn Foster Segal) 

Francine Prose reviews  The Most of Nora Ephron in the New York Review of Books:

There is a beautiful essay in which Rebecca West speculates about how much greater an artist Charlotte Brontë might have been had she not been hobbled by the pressure of supporting her siblings.

The Rebecca West essay was published on The Saturday Review, November 5, 1932, pp. 217-218 and can be read here.