'A one-woman evangelical movement for the supremacy of Villette over almost all other novels by anyone, ever'

The Times asks author Charlotte Mendelson about her 'culture fix'.

My favourite author or book

I am a one-woman evangelical movement for the supremacy of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette over almost all other novels by anyone, ever. It is staggeringly bold, modern, astute and, frankly, weird: probably the most famous line of Lucy Snowe, its grumpy, intelligent and plain protagonist, is: “I, Lucy Snowe, said nothing.” George Eliot wrote about it: “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre”, and you don’t argue with George.

Next Avenue interviews Susanna Hoffs about her debut novel This Bird Has Flown.

A few years ago, the 64-year-old singer/songwriter — whose vocals can be heard on The Bangles' hits "Walk Like an Egyptian," "Eternal Flame" and the Prince-penned "Manic Monday" — decided it was time to write the book she'd longed to write. The result is "This Bird Has Flown,"a romantic comedy set in Oxford, England, that has hints of "Jane Eyre" and loads of musical references. [...]

Facing a blank page is daunting. How did you know where to begin if you've never written a book before? What was your process?

That's such a good question. Once I had the idea that I should follow this lifelong dream to write a novel, I started to piece together a story that was about the ghosts of our past. Will they ruin our chances of finding love, having a good life or being able to succeed? I could apply what I know [to the main character], having spent most of my adult life as a musician. I know what it's like to have butterflies in your stomach and fear that you'll open your mouth, and nothing will come out, or it'll sound terrible or you'll play all the wrong chords. It's scary.

I've been reading my whole life. I love nothing more than being lost in fiction, out of my own head and in somebody else's story. I've read "Jane Eyre" over and over through the course of my life and then I read over and over again the Daphne du Maurier book "Rebecca," which I found similar themes in. So I kind of honed in on those themes. And then I thought, they're sort of Gothic romances in a sense and if I set the character in Oxford, Oxford itself becomes kind of a gothic setting for the book. Then the story unfolded with me having the pleasure of disappearing into my fantasy world and thinking, "Who else will be in the story?"

I love unreliable narrator characters and I thought there would probably be some fun, interesting but pretentious Oxford professor types that would be good to pepper in. And I did a lot of pleasurable research, watching British detective shows, any show set in Oxford, and rereading books that were set in Oxford. (Sandra Ebejer)

Stuff interviews poet and short story writer Dr Tracey Slaughter.

What book did you read as a child or teen that had a profound effect on you?

The Brontë sisters were my first ever pre-teen taste of any hardback classics: the smothering red room in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and the child-wraith scratching at the glass in Emily’s Wuthering Heights pulled me bodily into the page the way no other book ever had. (Sharron Pardoe)

Heraldo de Aragón (Spain) interviews writer Julia Navarro.

Si le parece empezamos por su abuela, que figura en la dedicatoria de su nuevo libro, ‘Una historia compartida. Con ellos, sin ellos, por ellos, frente a ellos’ (Plaza & Janés, 2023. 406 páginas), que presentaba el martes 28 en Ámbito Cultural de El Corte Inglés.

A mí me enseñó a leer mi abuela Teresa. Vivíamos en una casa grande con mucha gente. Mi prima Nieves, la mayor, era muy aplicada, disciplinada, estudiosa, y se ponía a hacer los deberes; a su hermano pequeño lo dejaban ir a su aire y yo, que estaba en medio, quería hacer recortables, que eran mi debilidad, pero no me podía escaquear. Tenía que leer. Mi abuela me hacía leer cosas, cuentos, novelas de las hermanas Brönte [sic], al principio no me enteraba mucho pero luego sí, claro, y era un ejercicio de leer en voz alta; leía cuentos, recuerdo un volumen gris, grueso, un tocho, de los hermanos Grimm, creo que ese fue mi primer libro. Creo que siempre disfruté de las historias. De unas más que otras porque no era fácil para una niña entender a ‘Jane Eyre’. (Antón Castro) (Translation)

El cultural (Spain) features the exhibition Visionarios románticos at Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid.

El Extremo Norte se prestaba a la interiorización porque era ya una idea. Nos recuerda Knut Ljøgodt, comisario de la muestra junto a Carlos Sánchez, que el monstruo del Dr. Frankenstein es avistado, en la novela de Shelley, en el mar de hielo –ese que pintó Friedrich sin haberlo visto– durante una expedición al Ártico, que el terror se manifiesta como vacío, en Un descenso al Maelström de Poe, en el archipiélago de Lofoten, y que Jane Eyre, en la narración de Brontë, imagina esos “reinos de una cadavérica blancura”, “plagados de sombras”. (Elena Vozmediano) (Translation)

Empordà (in Catalan) reports on a recent talk by poet Lluís Bosch.

Va ser aleshores quan va recordar la figura d’Emily Brontë, escriptora i poeta que apareix citada en el llibre i amb la qual se sent molt connectat, amb la seva veu. "En llegir la seva poesia vaig quedar absort de la força de la naturalesa, del paisatge, de les absències i presències", confessà. (Cristina Vilà Bartis) (Translation)

Variety ranks 'The Best Zombie Movies of All Time' and one of them is

5 I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton collaborated on several acclaimed horror movies for RKO Pictures in the 1940s, including this eerie gothic romance about an innocent nurse who’s drawn into the dark world of the occult while caring for a comatose patient on a Caribbean sugar plantation. Loosely based by Charlotte Brontë’s novel “Jane Eyre,” the film’s dreamlike atmosphere and noir-inspired visuals are indeed memorable, but it’s towering actor Darby Jones as the mute zombie henchman of the villainous voodoo priest who steals the show. His looming shadow and bulbous eyes continue to generate potent chills more than 80 years later. (Matthew Chernov)