Too blustery

A contributor to Meanjin Quarterly looks back on her reading history.

In my High School, I moved on to Sweet Valley High novels, Jane Austen and the Brontës. I found Moby Dick boring and laboured over To Kill a Mockingbird. Dracula was a treat. Wuthering Heights was too blustery for me, and yet Kate Bush’s enigmatic Running Up that Hill, first produced in 1985, kept me interested. As an accompanying soundtrack, it’s divine. (Margaret Hickey)

The Australian reviews the Sydney Theatre Company's production of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

Novel approach lifts Tenant’s enjoyment

Anne Brontë’s gothic novel has been adapted for the stage and its depiction of domestic abuse is as shocking as it was in 1848. (...) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been called the first feminist novel. Anne Brontë was certainly tougher on men than her sisters were and her novel, published in 1848, presented a brutal picture of habitual male drunkenness and domestic violence. It's shocking that it is all utterly relevant more than 170 years later. (John McCallum)