Wearying Heights and Unpleasant People

Quite a sad and difficult day to do a newsround. But here it is:

Winnipeg Free Press reviews Miranda K. Pennington A Girl Walks into a Book:

In a new book, Miranda Pennington, a New York-based editor and writing teacher, adds to recent offerings by sharing her experiences with the work of celebrated Victorian novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë.
Pennington, who is interested in both the writing and the lives of the Brontë sisters, quotes at length from their letters and novels. Her focus, however, is her own fortuitous encounters with Brontë novels at difficult times in her life.
Pennington, who weeps with emotion on her first visit to Haworth Parsonage, the Brontë home, is by no means an uncritical reader of their work. One of the bolder moves she makes in her memoir is to write off Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in a one-paragraph chapter titled Wearying Heights. Pennington softens her position in a followup chapter, where she engages at length with the novel. She stands by her negative assessment, however, concluding: "If I met Wuthering Heights at a cocktail party, I would have literally nothing to say to it."
As Pennington’s personification of a literary classic suggests, she is a person in search of good books and good company. The keynote of this memoir is longing: a longing for love and purpose, but also to feel close to the Brontës and to be guided by both the lessons of their novels and the example of their challenging but productive lives. She identifies closely with them; regarding her childhood, for example, she observes, "The Brontës and I all embellished our make-believe with books we’d read and stories we’d heard, blurring the line between reality and art as we lived inside our creations." (...)
Pennington’s devotion to the Brontës is earnest, but her memoir is also very funny. Pennington has quips about both the novels she dislikes and those she adores, observing, for instance, that "Without Jane’s passion, Jane Eyre is basically a series of dismal British buildings populated by mostly unpleasant people with well-stocked libraries."
Observations like this one energize Pennington’s memoir, and are an invitation to Brontë fans to think about the books they cherish in new ways. (Vanessa Warne)

The Tribune (India) praises the role of literature in our lives:

We empathise with them, surrender, and sometimes even fall in love with them. And oh! How profoundly we connect to Quasimodo’s pain (Notre Dame de Paris), Meursault’s detachment (The Stranger), Prince Myshkin’s innocence (The Idiot), Atticus Finch’s sagacity (To Kill A Mockingbird), Heathcliff’s agony and passion (The Wuthering Heights) and Anna’s emotional honesty (Anna Karenina). (Eesha Duggal)

Sentieri Selvaggi (Italy) posts about the film The Portrait of a Lady 1996:

L’epoca delle eroine tenaci, libere da pregiudizi, in grado di sovvertire con la propria indole l’infelice futuro che il destino ha preparato loro (pensiamo a Jane Eyre) sta voltando la sua ultima pagina; ancora animata da uritratto di signora_campionno spirito libero e ribelle, Isabel resta vittima dei sentimenti – quell’amore negato ad altri e poi concesso, sotto inganno e manipolazione, a un uomo che si rivelerà meschino ed egoista. (Marco Bolsi) (Translation)

Kaye Spivey vlogs abot Wuthering Heights.