"If you want romance? Go to Broadway!"

Lighting & Sound America reviews Emma Rice's Wuthering Heights.

Well, keep your eyes glued to the stage as Rice's nimble company whisks us through Brontë's tumultuous tale, using every trick in the theatrical book to keep us up to speed and on our toes. Two scenic units, a doorway and a windowed wall, roll and spin into place, instantly creating multiple locations. Puppets stand in for angry dogs and rambunctious children. Characters running across the windy, desolate moors must navigate two enormous jump ropes that sometimes ensnare them, dragging them backward. Books, attached to the ends of poles, magically become a flock of birds. A set of small blackboards serve as tombstones, keeping tabs on the narrative's ever-rising body count. When events get too involved, or a change of pace is needed, The Moors, a sort of countryside Greek chorus, arrives to fill in a plot point, interrogate a character, or to erupt in song, admonishing us, "If you want romance? Go to Broadway!"

That last comment is an example of the giddy wit in which the entire production is festively wrapped; it is also an apt warning. Rice embraces Brontë's remorseless narrative, a comprehensive account of the damage people can inflict on each other. [...] Even if you haven't read the book or seen William Wyler's swoony cinematic romance, it's obvious that this "harsh harvest of hate" (as The Moors put it) can only end in ruin.

At the same time, the production's exuberance strikes unexpected sparks of humor. A stranger approaching the front door of Wuthering Heights during a windstorm is, literally, blown sideways. Catherine is first seen brandishing a whip, the tragic Victorian heroine as she-demon. Some of the most amusing touches focus on Hindley's toothy, empty-headed spouse Frances, her attempts at befriending Catherine frigidly received, or on Little Linton, Heathcliff's "whey-faced wretch" of a son, a neurasthenic weakling who can't settle into a chair without turning it into a princess-and-the-pea style exercise in agony.

That Rice can accommodate such moments of fun inside the swirl of tragedy is proof of her deep attachment to a novel that one shocked contemporary reviewer dismissed as "a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horror." Even now, it packs plenty of potent jolts. Despite their class differences -- he is made to sleep outside with the estate's animals while she is on track to become a fine lady -- Heathcliff and Catherine are driven by a mutual and all-devouring passion. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same," she says, a statement more fearsome than enchanting. They taunt and tease, making each other miserable if only to prove their love's unfathomable depths. Even when she is gravely ill, they can't stop furiously trading recriminations. Heathcliff, unable to bear it, says, "I wish I could hold you till we are both dead! I shouldn't care if you suffer. Why shouldn't you suffer as I do!" And when Lucy McCormick, as Catherine, steps downstage, grabs a mic and hurls down curses on the world, this Wuthering Heights makes a convincing case that Emily Brontë is the very soul of punk. (...)

Rice never quite solves a central weakness, that the narrative takes a bit of a dive after Catherine's death, requiring some time to regroup before it becomes once again gripping. And a good ten minutes could profitably be cut from the nearly three-hour running time. But the final scenes, when two characters, brutalized by all that has gone on before, find forgiveness and a fruitful form of love, is as moving as anything I've seen lately. The overall effect is a total immersion into the strange and emotionally resonant landscape of Brontë's novel. It's a sumptuous experience because the production's skill is matched with so much love for its source material. (David Barbour)

Forbes recommends '31 Spooky New Books To Scare You This Fall For Halloween' and one of them is 

For author Betsy Cornwell, it’s the perfect time to release a book inspired by one of the most beloved gothic reads of all time, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, released in 1847. Cornwell first read the classic at age 10, and she remembers feeling frightened by many elements of the book. As she grew older, parts of the book bothered her, and she struggled to come to terms with her dueling affection and frustration with the story.

Thus Reader, I Murdered Him (out next month) was born. Cornwell first came up with the idea for the book, about a young women sent to a boarding school in London who begins delivering vigilante justice when she teams up with a con woman, four years ago. The young women target young men who hurt their friends, meting out punishments that the duo feels fits the crime, at a time when young women were expected to grin and bear pain inflicted upon them—as in Eyre. (Toni Fitzgerald)

The Globe and Mail features Ann-Marie MacDonald and her new novel Fayne.

“This book is a perfect cold-weather page turner with the kind of pleasure you get from cuddling up with dark classics like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre,” [Oprah] Winfrey told her viewers.

Fayne harkens back to the Brontës (both of the aforementioned books make an appearance in the story) and the kind of literature that made MacDonald fall in love with the craft. She was 10 when an older sister suggested she read Jane Eyre. “And it just totally changed my life,” says MacDonald. “So I’ve had a relationship with late 19th century Victorian fiction from a very early age.” (Marsha Lederman)

The Irish Times reviews The Last Chairlift by John Irving

Alongside these is a baffling amount of weak literary explication and juvenile political opining. All Republicans seem to be gun-toting assholes, while supposedly likable characters “scream” at CNN in rage. We’re given a summary, as well as numerous interpretations, of Moby-Dick, including what I guess to be Irving’s own take on the inclusion of the titular hyphen (a drawn-out joke on possible misinterpretations of “Dic”’ ensues). Dickens is quoted at length, while similarities are drawn between a character and Jane Eyre. (Lucy Sweeney Byrne)

En tu pantalla (Spain) features the new book by bookstagrammer-turned-writer Yago Gómez Duro: Decir adiós no es olvidarte.

Entre sus referentes literarios se encuentran desde las hermanas Brontë, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens o Bram Stoker, hasta figuras contemporáneas como la del escritor Máximo Huerta, André Aciman o la poeta Rupi Kaur. En 2019 publicó Al otro lado de la noche, un libro de prosa poética. Decir adiós no es olvidarte es su primera novela. (Pablo Juan Nieto Castillo) (Translation)