The land of Wuthering Heights

Los Angeles Review of Books interviews Amina Cain about her novel Indelicacy.

The way you intertwine writing and becoming is something the novel does so beautifully. I connect to Vitória when she says: “I will die if I can’t write and then I will have wasted my life.” I am also curious to hear you talk about your interest in layering other books into your own, such as Butler’s Kindred and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. These are both books about writing, or writing toward other books, such as Jean Rhys rewriting Jane Eyre’s “madwoman” in the attic. They also happen to be two of my favorite books.  In addition to that connection to writing, all four of the books that make their way into Indelicacy deal with violence in some way, and with trauma or damage, and while writing I was thinking about how violence (personal and historical) leaves traces or parts of itself behind that while we might not be able to literally see, doesn’t completely disappear, affecting how people (and characters) feel in their day-to-day lives, and the relationships they have with each other. I wanted to try to work with those traces of the other books if that makes sense, I suppose as a kind of haunting, and of remembrance. I named my four female characters after characters in those four books, not with the idea of rewriting them, but to honor them.
Kindred and Wide Sargasso Sea are two of my favorite novels as well, and with Indelicacy I wanted to formally acknowledge how important the books I love are to what I myself write, and to my process of writing. I had a realization a few years ago that in a way I owe my life of writing to these books that have moved me to respond to them. It’s that classic thing where you read a book and all you want to do after reading it is write, because it stirs something up in you that might not have gotten stirred up otherwise. I know that I write differently because of these books. I don’t at all feel that anxiety of influence other writers sometimes worry about. Instead, I feel an ecstasy of influence. The few times I’ve heard writers say they don’t like to read while writing, I’ve not understood it. I mean I do, but I don’t relate. For me it’s about lineage, and community. I feel I am in a lineage with the books that make their way into Indelicacy, like Kindred, Wide Sargasso Sea, Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark, and Jean Genet’s The Maids. And I feel indebted to those writing today with whom I feel in kinship, such as Patty Yumi Cottrell, Kate Zambreno, Renee Gladman, Danielle Dutton, Bhanu Kapil, Sofia Samatar, and Suzanne Scanlon. I feel hugely inspired by the work you’re doing too, Kate, with your book Hoarders and your art/performance project Unfriend Me Now!. I feel lucky to be writing during this time, among all of you. (Kate Durbin)

Yorkshire Evening Post reports that a popular shop in Haworth, Haworth Wholefoods, is now for sale.

Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne grew up in the pretty West Yorkshire village of Haworth, and its quaint cobbled main street with its range of shops was familiar territory to the talented family.
Now the bustling street’s popular wholefood shop is for sale, offering a rare chance for a new owner to enjoy the benefits of running a unique business in the popular tourist village. [...]
The Haworth shop’s location couldn’t be better – it’s right at the heart of the village’s Main Street, just a stone’s throw from the Georgian home where the Brontë sisters lived.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum, their beautifully preserved former home attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year keen to see how they lived.
Haworth village is also popular among steam train enthusiasts - the heritage Keighley & Worth Valley Railway stops at the picturesque village station.
The village is also just ten miles west of Bradford, making it within easy commuting distance.
The business opened in 2016 and is being sold so owner Sally Hayes can concentrate on running her other shop in West Yorkshire.
She said: “Haworth is a charming and quaint village, virtually nothing has changed since the days of the Brontë sisters.
“The shop is at the top of Main Street, there’s a beautiful church in the middle and visitors often walk up and down just enjoying the atmosphere and character.
“The Brontë Parsonage Museum attracts people from all over the world, while there are plenty of self-catering holiday cottages nearby where people stay to just enjoy the area and pop into the village to stock up.” (This is an article promoted by the business agent selling the shop)

Still in Haworth, The Telegraph and Argus reminisces about what was done for the Tour de Yorkshire in the year of Branwell Brontë's bicentenary:

Who can forget the giant picture of Branwell Brontë striding out on his bicycle, that took up an entire school field? The mammoth artwork - measuring 80 by 65 metres - was made with the help of schoolchildren to coincide with the 2017 race.
Using waste marquee carpet and 3,000 plant pots, the work - to celebrate the bicentenary of Branwell Brontë - was created with the help of children from Haworth Primary School. Branwell’s head and hands were sprayed with grass-friendly paint, while pupils placed and pegged the plant pots into position to create the bike.
The work was crowned the Land Art winner after an international public vote. (Helen Mead)

Here's how British musician Steve Hackett sums up what's worth seeing in England in Forbes:

For many Americans, the extent of their travels to England has been London and, maybe, a day trip to Stonehenge. Repeat visitors to England may venture further to Bath or the Cotswolds, but there are so many other rural and urban treasures that go unseen.
Take it from Steve Hackett, a British musician renowned for his solo work and lead guitar playing for Genesis, one of the world's most acclaimed rock bands.
"Those four places are indeed worth visiting," says Hackett, who has spent most of his life in London or its outskirts. "York is another beautiful city, full of history and ghosts. Oxford and Cambridge are also pretty old and have extraordinary majesty."
Some smaller towns are also "charming," including Rye on the East Sussex coast, "with its old cobbled Mermaid Street and memories of smugglers," Hackett says.
Southern England "has rolling hills, forests and woodland, whilst the moorland of central and northern England is wild and rugged — the land of Wuthering Heights," he says. "Cornwall is pretty wild in places, too, and steeped in Arthurian legend." (Gary Stoller)

In Ireland, The Irish Times recommends 'Eight romantic Irish homes to fall in love with'. One of them is

Castle Curious, a limestone ruin set on the edge of a river in Co Cork’s Golden Vale [...] The name and condition of the property taps into a wild, inner-Heathcliff state in most of us. (Alanna Gallagher)

Not sure whether we want to tap into that state.

A contributor to SDP (Mexico) reds the Brontës in a hospital waiting room.

Mientras espero mi turno, termino de leer la novela Jean [sic] Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë. No es por presumir pero yo ya me eché a todas las hermanitas Brontë. De Emily leí “Cumbres Borrascosas”, de Anne leí “Agnes Grey” (si me dicen que es la de las sombras, les retiro el saludo). Y así. Incluso viajé hace unos años a Haworth, en Yorkshire, para visitar la casa de las hermanas más imaginativas de la campiña inglesa. (Eloy Garza) (Translation)

Wicked Local Hanover reviews the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.

From first spark to dying embers there’s much aflame in the sadly beautiful “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” It’s an immolation in which two 18th-century lovers burn passionately in an act of unquenchable l’amour. That they are both young women unable to douse forbidden urges only adds to the intensity of the pyromania on display in Céline Sciamma’s wanton act of arson.
She lights the match and her two gorgeous stars, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, movingly fan the flames in depicting a slow-burn romance in a sort of R-rated version of “Wuthering Heights” in which all varieties of love evolve amid a chilling seaside setting that’s as picturesque as it is portending. (Al Alexander)