Top Withens inspired White Windows

Sophia Tobin, author of The Vanishing, has spoken to The Yorkshire Post about the inspiration behind it.

The setting suggested itself to her on a bus journey between Hebden Bridge and Haworth. “I was looking out of the window and the moors just looked sublime,” she says. “Then suddenly a cloud went over the sun and the atmosphere completely changed – and I thought ‘this is it’. I wanted the central character to feel like a stranger in the landscape.” The house in the novel, WhitJane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.’ Tobin, however, demurs.
e Windows, is loosely based on a ruined farmhouse that Tobin spotted near Top Withens on the moors above Haworth. “The books I write kind of shape themselves as I write them,” she says. “I don’t plot them in advance and the twists and turns happen as part of the writing process. The landscape, though, was really key. And I went back to Yorkshire again to make sure that I had got the atmosphere right.” The atmosphere is spot-on – the descriptions of elemental walks across the moors are very evocative as are the passages set within the claustrophobic walls of White Windows. The prevailing mood is gothic. Reviewers have made comparisons with the Brontës, of whom Tobin has long been an admirer, with one describing the book as ‘a cross between
“The Brontës definitely brought me to that landscape but I didn’t consciously try to make it like their work,” she says. “As I was editing the manuscript I could see the similarities but this is written for the modern reader and is much grittier, so there are parallels but it is different.” (Yvette Huddleston)

Verily Magazine recommends watching Jane Eyre 2011.

Jane Eyre // nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design in 2012
This film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s literary masterpiece didn’t make a huge splash in the box office, but it is a quiet and beautiful movie that highlights the talent of leads Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. Watch this on a snowy, solo evening. (Monica Weigel McCarthy)

The Brussels Brontë Blog posts about Turkish editions of Villette and The Professor.