A Twist in the Middle

More news on the closing of the public toilets at the Brontë Parsonage car park. Keighley News reports:

The Brontë Parsonage Museum is looking into building its own public toilets in readiness for when Bradford Council withdraws funding from public loos in the village.
Councillor David Mahon informed fellow parish councillors of this at a meeting of Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council.
But he said he understood that if these new toilets are built they would only be for museum visitors.
The parsonage has this week confirmed the news.
The parish council is considering what action it should take to address the loss of funding for both the toilets in Haworth Central Park and the Brontë Parsonage car park. (Miran Rahman)

The Guardian has a Top 10 of 'literary twists in fiction':

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Not all superb twists need to come at the end. There’s a twist in the middle of this classic novel that takes it to another level of passion, intrigue and excitement. There are hints before the big reveal, but not even the most imaginative reader would dare to imagine the truth. Twists in the middles of stories rather than at their ends tend to say: “And what do we all think now?” rather than, “So THIS is what we’re supposed to think!” – and this one does that brilliantly. (Sophie Hannah)

Author Edwidge Danticat remembers her college days in The Village Voice:

I was that kind of student: I had a hunger to get it all in. So much of that experience — the people, the environment — was new to me. At the library, you could watch these VHS copies of BBC versions of Brontë novels; I remember binge-watching, before it existed, those things. It was very nerdy of me, but as long as I was physically on the campus, I really tried to use every second I was there. I wanted to do everything. 

More college days. The Telegraph interviews the actress Ellie Kendrick, who fights White Walkers in Game of Thrones and is in Cambridge right now:

Kendrick’s passion for studying is infectious. I’m in awe. But her passion goes beyond Shakespeare and the Brontës. University was where she started to learn about politics for the first time, and while Cambridge was more diverse than she was expecting, it seems it’s still a white middle-class affair: “Universities need to work a lot harder to be inclusive. Universities, especially those at the top, like Cambridge, need to do more work in terms of outreach – there are a larger proportion of private school children than there should be.” (Alice Barraclough)

Variety reviews the play The Divide by Alan Ayckbourn:

You have to admire Alan Ayckbourn. At 78 years old, after more than 80 plays, he’s undertaken a work of size, sweep and ambition. But with “The Divide,” a two-part, six-hour and aptly-titled epic premiering at the Edinburgh International Festival, he’s split his focus, straddling between prose and drama in a darkly imagined but uneven dystopian story. Think Dickens meets Atwood, with a touch of Brontë. While sometimes intriguing with some compelling performances, it is more often simply bloated and befuddling.(Frank Rizzo)

Missoula Independent reviews the film Lady Macbeth:

Lady Macbeth is modern horror in period-drama's clothing. The film drips with sexuality and sin, and more than that, it has a cunning way of implicating us in the mischief. William Oldroyd directs it, from a script by Alice Burch, based on Nikolai Leskov's novel, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Think Jane Eyre, if Jane knew what an orgasm was, had a penchant for violence and disliked children. (Molly Laich)

BookRiot lists several Gothic books in honour of the upcoming 220th anniversary of Mary Shelley:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
A story about the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, who was adopted by Catherine’s father. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights after Mr. Earnshaw’s death, but returns years later as a polished gentleman to exact revenge.

Second times in the Evening Standard:

 We can find plenty of cautionary tales of romantic U-turns in celebrity history (not least Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who were married from 1964-1974 and then tried fruitlessly again from 1975-1976) as well as in literature. The second-chance plotline taps into fundamental questions of human nature: can people change? Is forgiveness truly possible?
Think of Jane Eyre, who takes back the bigamist Mr Rochester in a dreamlike reconciliation after she wanders the barren moors developing a more mature concept of romance, while back at his Gothic manor he is blinded, maimed and humbled. Thank God it usually takes less suffering for estranged couples to come to their senses. (Johanna Thomas-Corr)

Aleteia reviews Seeking Jesus in Everyday Life by Julie Davis:

In Julie’s case, for instance, she experiences a deeper connection with God through reading books and watching movies than more traditional routes like saying the rosary. She says, “[God] gave me that love of story. I’m created with it, and He uses it. Once I converted, I was reading books asking, ‘How did I never notice in Jane Eyre that prayer is a thread throughout this whole story?’ I saw everything with new eyes. (Tony Rossi)

The Harvard Press posts about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Dicas Literárias (in Portuguese) reviews Anne Brontë's novel. An Encyclopedia of Weirdness publishes a multigif of Jane Eyre 2006.