First of all, today December 19th marks the 172nd anniversary of the death of Emily Brontë. We think that Charlotte's poem on the death of her beloved sister will resonate with many across the world this particular year:
On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë
My darling thou wilt never know
The grinding agony of woe
That we have bourne for thee,
Thus may we consolation tear
E'en from the depth of our despair
And wasting misery.
The nightly anguish thou art spared
When all the crushing truth is bared
To the awakening mind,
When the galled heart is pierced with grief,
Till wildly it implores relief,
But small relief can find.
Nor know'st thou what it is to lie
Looking forth with streaming eye
On life's lone wilderness.
"Weary, weary, dark and drear,
How shall I the journey bear,
The burden and distress?"
Then since thou art spared such pain
We will not wish thee here again;
He that lives must mourn.
God help us through our misery
And give us rest and joy with thee
When we reach our bourne!
Now onto regular news. Isabel Greenberg's
Glass Town is one of the graphic novels of the year for
The Herald.
Glass Town, Isabel Greenberg, Jonathan Cape, £18.99
Published back in February before the world turned upside down, Isabel Greenberg’s metafictional take on the lives of the Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell deserves not to be overlooked in any measure of the year’s best. It plays with the Brontës’ own juvenile creations and explores ideas of creativity and legacy in the process. (Teddy Jamieson)
As a "voracious" reader she devoured everything from Roald Dahl to CS Lewis, the Brontës to Toni Morrison. There was an English degree at Cambridge, then early success. (Cachella Smith)
In advance of Netflix's
Bridgerton,
Elle (Canada) vindicates chick lit and its screen adaptations.
The term “chick lit”—which Harzewski defines as any narrative in which a woman is her own heroine on a quest, whether it be one for love, career success or reinvention—is inherently condescending. Its first print usage was recorded back in the ’80s at Princeton University, when it was used to refer to feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter’s women’s lit class (behind her back, of course). At the time, Showalter, who is considered to be one of the first American academics to treat female authors as capable of creating serious work, was teaching the writing of now-widely-revered authors like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. But, naturally, the genre has evolved. Books like Sex and the City and Bridget Jones’s Diary spring to mind as hallmarks—both loved by readers and detested by outsiders who sneer at them as frivolous works dressed up in high heels. Something that remains the same? No matter how popular the genre is, no matter how many blockbuster onscreen adaptations these books inspire, chick lit (and flicks) is regarded with a dismissive attitude—the gum stuck to the sole of the entertainment industry’s shoe. (Patricia Karounos)
Book Riot recommends '15 Books Like Taylor Swift’s EVERMORE for Your Winter Reading List', including
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
This song seems to be about someone struggling with being in love with someone everyone else wants. “I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch,” the narrator says. “Everybody wants you / everybody wonders what it would be like to love you.” The singer resents the object of the song for being so damn beautiful and desirable. Relatable! I think of this as a very Jane Eyre dynamic. That pull-toward-the-beautiful-people thing is also a large part of Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter. Tess arrives in New York as a naive outsider and gets a job at a high-profile restaurant. There, she’s indoctrinated into a world of intoxicating flavors, expensive alcohol, and sex and drugs, with the help of two restaurant staffers she finds irresistible. Simone and Jake are aloof and beautiful, and Tess feels a pull toward them even as they remain mysterious. (Kathleen Keenan)
The Times talks about the case of Ella Kissi-Brath:
Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debrah recalled that her daughter had always been bright. The book at her bedside when she died was Jane Eyre and she seized the chance to swim, cycle and play football. (Jack Malvern)
Also in
The Times a quiz from the QI TV show:
9. Which Brontë sister is the eldest — Anne, Charlotte or Emily?
La Vanguardia (Spain) looks into the book that have been read 'abroad' and which haven't been translated into Spanish yet, such as
Y hay una sorpresa y una coincidencia: en casi todas las recomendaciones, incluidos The New Yorker, The New York Times, Electric Literature o Vanity Fair, encontramos una ficción mestiza, Mexican Gothic, de la mexicanocanadiense Silvia Moreno-García. Sea porque hemos decidido que puestos a pasar miedo mejor que sea de algo irreal, porque el de verdad lo tenemos muy cerca, sea porque la trama nos retrotrae a viejos conocidos como Jane Eyre o Rebecca, lo cierto es que Moreno-García (México, 1981), quien también ejerce de columnista en The Washington Post, ya ha firmado la adaptación televisiva de su obra. (Isabel Gómez Melenchón) (Translation)
The Guardian has an article on 'Bookish fun on TV and radio to enjoy this Christmas' which includes the National Theatre production of
Jane Eyre on SkyArts on the 28th of December.
Oprah Mag has a quote from
Jane Eyre ('I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you.') on its selection of the '50 Cutest Couples Captions for Your Instagram Posts'.
0 comments:
Post a Comment