The Guardian reviews
While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt:
While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt review – Broadchurch meets Anne Brontë (...)
he haunted house – if not possessed by literal ghosts, then by traumatic memories – is a trope writers have used for centuries. From Rebecca’s Manderley to Jane Eyre’s Thornfield Hall, some houses are designed to torture the women who enter them looking for escape from their own lives. In this psychological thriller from Stephanie Merritt, known for her historical crime novels written as SJ Parris, Zoe Adams arrives at a renovated mansion on a remote Scottish island, running from a bad marriage.
Merritt’s book hits a midpoint between Broadchurch and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Zoe meets suspicious, tight-lipped islanders, a fusty professor obsessed with esoterica, a disturbed child who refuses to talk about “The Incident”. However, despite the many gothic tropes, Merritt’s writing is at its most enjoyable when rooted in the everyday. Her biting wit comes across in exquisitely uncomfortable scenes, such as one where Zoe is attempting to start a hire car while her landlord watches, “looking at her with the weary, secretly pleased expression men assume to let you know they are proving all their theories about women and machines”. (Caroline O'Donoghue)
big think lists famous siblings who have changed history:
The Brontë sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, were titans of English literature in the first half of the 19th century. All three of them have a classic to their name and most people have heard of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. However, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is less well known.
Born into a lower middle-class family in northern England, the Brontë family initially had six members. The two eldest sisters died as teenagers of tuberculosis, which would later kill off the rest of the family as well, and none of the siblings lived past the age of 40. These deaths, alongside that of their mother, would influence the writings of the three literary sisters and infuse it with an often-shocking realism.
Their books focus on themes of feminism, classism, morality, and social criticism. They were noted for their frank discussion of issues that plagued Victorian England. Today, they are still widely read and have influenced many writers.
I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends! - Charlotte Brontë (Scotty Hendricks)
The Daily Telegraph (Australia) has another list - the most annoying characters in literature:
Australians are a cultured lot — the Dymocks Top 101 Books of All Time, voted by readers, is chock full of classics, from Harry Potter (number one) to Pride and Prejudice (seven) and Jane Eyre (22). (...)
Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre
He locked his mad wife in the attic. Alarm bells anyone? But no, that didn’t put Jane off. And people think Heathcliff is bad. (Kerry Parnell)
Premium Times (Nigeria) discusses the future of the so-called Nollywood industry:
During our high school years, we had already been fed a staple of British classics from William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, George Orwell and Jane Austen. (Bunmi Fatoye-Matore)
La Nación (Argentina) interviews Jessica Bennett, gender editor of The New York Times:
Juana Libedinsky: Igual, en The New York Times están diversificando cómo cubren los temas de género. Fue un gran éxito que hayan publicado los obituarios de mujeres que lo merecían, pero que el diario olvidó. Personalmente fue un shock cuando vi que faltaba Charlotte Brontë. O la fotógrafa Diane Arbus, tan de moda ahora por su trabajo pionero. Pero no todo era cultura, política o derechos sociales: descubrieron, por ejemplo, a la mujer que trajo el tenis a los Estados Unidos, que prácticamente nadie conocía.
J.B.: El caso de los obituarios es el ejemplo perfecto de lo que quiero lograr con mi trabajo, porque critica a la sociedad, pero a la vez critica a los prejuicios mismos del diario. Y cuenta buenas historias, usando, también, un formato interactivo con la participación de todas las secciones. Encontramos que desde 1851, solo entre un 15 y un 20 por ciento de los obituarios fueron para mujeres, y en los últimos años no mejoró tanto. Efectivamente, no publicamos nada cuando murió Charlotte Brontë. Pero lo peor es que cuando murió su marido, sí le publicamos un obituario, donde decíamos que él era famoso por "ser el marido de Charlotte Brontë". Algunas mujeres sí recibieron obituarios, pero la crítica va a la forma en la que los escribimos. Por ejemplo, pusimos como noticia que murió "la mujer de Diego Rivera". Solo mucho más abajo en la nota se mencionaba que Frida Kahlo era, también, artista. (Translation)
The Brontë Babe reviews Juliet Bell's
The Heights.
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