Resilient, moral, clever, caring

The Sunday Times presents the upcoming new adaptation of Vanity Fair on ITV:

William Makepeace Thackeray’s work is subtitled A Novel Without a Hero and can be read as satirical sketches mocking English social conventions. In Becky Sharp, however, Thackeray invented a monstrous, delightful character too complex to be labelled, but easily the novel’s hero. She’s unconventional for any time, but certainly for her own. She arrived in the same year as Jane Eyre — resilient, moral, clever, caring, whose entire goal is to win the love and companionship of Mr Rochester (a man, lest we forget, whose wife has mental-health issues, so he locks her in the attic to better seduce the help). (Stephen Armstrong)

Also in the newspaper, a review of the novel Normal People by Sally Rooney:

But I wish she’d left this one in the barrel a little longer. Normal People feels like the promising debut, succumbing to problems that the more mature Conversations managed to avoid. If that novel read like a knowing modern take on F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, then Normal People is more like a muted, ingenuous rewrite of Wuthering Heights. (Claire Lowdon)

More Sunday Times tidbits:

Many of you will welcome this sign that young people are going to college to study subjects that have at least a job description in the title. We will always need nurse and engineers, but we will not necessarily always need someone who can tell you in what order the Brontës died.  (Caroline O'Donoghue)

The Reading Festival on Wokingham Today:

Overcast skies, dying light – “Darkness coming down, night is all around” – it could almost be a Brontë novel, were it not for the man dressed as a giant banana singing along to “All The Time”. (Michael Beakhouse)

Spooky tales of officers in The Tribune (India):

There were many Inspection and Dak Bungalows which were rumoured to be haunted. One of these, in a far-flung district, strangely a singleroomed structure, had been the site of a tragedy. In the days of the Raj, a young woman had blown her brains out, it was said, due to her husband’s wildly-wilful Heathcliff-like ways. (Maninder Singh)

La Capital (Argentina) reviews the biography Infernales by Laura Ramos:

Esta extraña biografía colectiva, que incluye un atípico capítulo final donde la autora explica las razones de su pasión bronteana, es el fruto de una rigurosa inmersión en un universo cerrado ―casi asfixiante―, enigmático, remoto. Ramos, tan enamorada de las obras de las hermanas como de sus vidas, viajó, caminó, preguntó. Y encontró, reveló, contó. Supo cómo hacerlo. (Sebastián Riestra) (Translation)

 If Mermaids Wore Suspenders lists literary characters as... beverages:

Raspberry beer = young Linton Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights
Linton is raspberry beer
A nice fruity beer tastes good and safe, just like juice…but the longer you drink it the more you realize it has the power to intoxicate you if you let your guard down. Young Linton traps young Cathy into believing he’s someone she wants to marry, but by the time she realizes his true character towards the end of Wuthering Heights it’s too late. She’s been trapped in his and Heathcliff’s nasty web.

A Wuthering Heights mention on Milliyet (Turkey):

Bakırköy’deki kadınlar matinesinde unutamadığı filmi de anımsattı sanatçı, “Laurence Olivier ve Merle Oberon’un başrollerinde olduğu, ‘Rüzgarlı Bayır’ oynuyordu. Çok eski, belki hatırlamazsınız onu... Emily Brontë’nin romanı, defalarca çevilmiştir.” (Sina Koloğlu) (Translation)

Jornal Opção (Brazil) talks about the recently deceased author V S Naipaul:

Em 1961, sugerindo que “os romances ruins ficaram piores”, deixou de escrever resenhas para “New Statesman”. Mesmo sem escrever críticas, continuou lendo literatura. “Gosto de Aksakoff quando fala do Volga enfurecido ou do Volga congelado. Aksakoff e Gógol me fazem experimentar a imensidão russa, igual os ‘Esboços do Desportista’, de Turguêniev. E o importante é o clima nas irmãs Brontë e em Dickens! Seria mais fácil falar do que não gosto: Jane Austen, Hardy, Henry James, Conrad, e quase todos os romancistas franceses contemporâneos”, escreveu, no “Times”, em 1961. (França Bélem) (Translation)

Jana Ojana News (Malaysia) mentions Jane Eyre and Rochester:

১৪। জেইন আয়ার এ্যান্ড এডওয়ার্ড রজেস্টার
লেখক ‘’Charlotte Brontë” এর বিখ্যাত উপন্যাস “Jane Eyre” এর প্রধান চরিত্র জেইন ছিল এতিম এক মেয়ে, যে কিনা ব্যবসায়ী রজেস্টারের ঘর দেখভাল করার জন্য গভর্নেস হিসেবে দায়িত্ব পালন করত। বয়সে অনেক বড় আর নিঃসঙ্গ মানুষ রজেস্টারের জীবনে জেইন যেন এক বসন্ত নিয়ে এসেছিল।
বয়স কিংবা সামাজিক ব্যবধান কোন কিছুই তাঁদের প্রেমে বাঁধা সৃষ্টি করতে পারেনি। কিন্তু বিয়ের দিনে হঠাৎ জেইন আবিষ্কার করে রজেস্টার পূর্ববিবাহিত। তাই জেইন তাঁকে ছেড়ে চলে যায়। পরে জেইন জানতে পারে, রজেস্টার তাঁর অসুস্থ ও পাগল স্ত্রীর প্রতি কোন অবহেলা করেনি। শুধু তাঁকে হারাবার ভয়ে এই সত্যটা গোপন করেছিল। (Translation)

The Telegraph & Argus talks about the reopening of the Thornton Village Street Market; Elle (Italy) yearns for the Loewe Classics collection.

The Brontë Babe Blog reviews The Case of the Missing Brontë by Robert Barnard.