Far ahead of its time

The Bucks Herald reports happily that the Northern Ballet's new Jane Eyre ballet will be performed in Aylesbury:

Aylesbury Waterside Theatre has been chosen as one of only six venues to host a new ballet of Jane Eyre in the 200th anniversary year of author Charlotte Bronte’s birth. (...)
Jane Eyre will be Cathy Marston’s second full length production for Northern Ballet following her creation of the Dickens classic A Tale Of Two Cities for the company in 2008.
She said: “Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was a novel far ahead of its time and when I think of Jane Eyre I feel inspired by images of her passionate but ‘impossible’ relationship with Mr Rochester, the fire and emotional destruction symbolised by Betha Mason - the infamous ‘woman in the attic’, the contrasting icy moorland through which she seems to run from one chapter of her life to another and, of course, her final reunion with Rochester.”
Ms Marston said creating for Northern Ballet was a joy because of the passion in the organisation for digging deep into stories through dance.
She said: “Though the company has excellent technique and production values, it is their unparalleled ability as dance actors that I love most, so I am thrilled to return to Northern Ballet in 2016 to create Jane Eyre.” (Heather Jan Brunt)

The Irish Times reviews the Jonathan Bate pseudobiography Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate:

He was Heathcliff to her Cathy [Sylvia Plath], and their seven years together colours every page of Bate’s book – as it has almost every other existing biography, film, novel and poem concerning Hughes. (John McAuliffe)

StLouis Public Radio interviews the actress Maxine Lehane who reminds us of her one-woman-show Brontë in the New York Off-Broadway:

Now based in New York, Linehan both acts and sings. At one point, she starred as Charlotte Brontë in an eponymous one-woman show, which she said was different—and difficult—but rewarding.
“It’s very different. As a singer you have an instrument that you have to be very careful about taking care of it. It’s a little more stressful to be in a singing role than it is to be in a dramatic role.” (Áine O'Connor)

The Sydney Morning Herald reviews the novel The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood:

The early, excited buzz around this book has included comparisons to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Such comparisons are not intended to claim influence, only to position The Natural Way of Things within a tradition of literary dystopias. Wood may or may not have read these or other things of which this novel might glancingly remind a reader: The Hunger Games, Robinson Crusoe, some of the reports coming out of Nauru and Manus Island, the first few chapters of Jane Eyre. (Kerryn Goldsworthy)

Elle talks about a curious book club:

And my reign can inject some spontaneity: Over appetizers, I "asked" two members to read Mallory Ortberg's Texts From Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations With Your Favorite Literary Characters aloud, and it was wonderful. (Alexis Coe)

Fast Company interviews Kate Beaton:

She’s got the sort of sense of humor that can make anything (Wuthering Heights, the Rum Rebellion, straw-man stereotypes of feminists, etc) so hilarious that she’s received four Harvey Awards, the Ignatz Ward, the Doug Wright Award, and her first book, Hark! A Vagrant, was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. (Dan Solomon)

Libération explores the novels of the writer Pierre Cendors:

Son troisième roman, Engeland, traitait aussi d’une relation intense entre deux enfants solitaires à Berlin, le garçon donné pour mort hantant l’esprit de la fille des années durant. «Je me suis un peu inspiré de mon enfance avec ma sœur, de deux ans plus âgée que moi. Nous étions un peu insulaires, un peu à la manière des sœurs Brontë, et elle m’a beaucoup initié à la littérature.» Insulaire… Le mot devait revenir souvent au cours de l’entretien. (Frédérique Roussel) (Translation)

Gazetta di Modena (Italy) interviews the writer Nicola Lagioia:

“Innanzitutto è merito di mia moglie Chiara - spiega Lagioia - senza di lei non sarei mai riuscito a scrivere questo libro. Se è vero che scrivere un romanzo è come stare in apnea, lo sforzo è durato tanto e avere avuto mio moglie accanto è stato fondamentale. Abbiamo molte cose in comune: tra i nostri libri prediletti c’è “Cime tempestose”. Quando ho visto Chiara per la prima volta aveva i capelli raccolti e dietro il collo tatuato il nome Heathcliff, protagonista maschile del romanzo di Emily Brontë. La scintilla è scattata subito» (Translation)

Radio Euskadi (Spain) interviews Ángeles Caso, the author of Todo ese fuego. Vesna Armstrong Photography posts pictures of a recent visit to the Brontë Waterfalls. Through a Glass Darkly reviews Jane Eyre. sound+vision (in Portuguese) posts about Les Soeurs Brontë 1979.