Sometimes you can know too much

The Washington Post reviews the latest novel by Maggie O'Farrell The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. Although the novel has been previously compared to Jane Eyre, the reviewer now places it side by side with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea:

Maggie O'Farrell's three previous novels have been respectfully reviewed, but her new one radiates the kind of energy that marks a classic. Think Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea: stories that illuminate the suffering quietly endured by women in polite society. To that list of insightful feminist tales add The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. At the heart of this fantastic new novel is a mystery you want to solve until you start to suspect the truth, and then you read on in a panic, horrified that you may be right. (Ron Charles)

The Minnesota Daily has a passing mention of the recent performances of Jane Eyre at the Guthrie Theatre:

Mojo theater, in essence, is everything that your Jane Eyre at the Guthrie is not- blending and freeze-frying the comic and the tragic, sweeping universal scopes and jaunty, physically aware performers. (Sarah Nicole Miller)

CottonKnickersForAfrica went to the Margaret Drabble talk in Haworth and shares a funny anecdote:

I took a half day’s leave in the afternoon and went to Haworth of Bronte fame to hear a talk by Margaret Drabble the novelist on the influence of the Brontes on her work. She was very good, funny and certainly knows her literature, or so I thought. I went with a retired professor of English Literature, who is a Bronte researcher. ‘Well she was wrong about that bit of Wuthering Heights, it was in the January 2 months before the baby was born that, that happened’. Sometimes you can know too much.

Harukanaru...Yume posts about Wuthering Heights in Thai. Lyza Danger Gardner reviews Jane Eyre. Everyday I Write the Book Blog interviews Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires, who comments once more on her Brontëite background:

Casey can be a somewhat frustrating person. Do you have sympathy for Casey because you share some of her impulses, or does she frustrate you as well?
MJ: Casey can be a frustrating person. I think her behavior is occasionally textbook (psychology) “acting out.” In my vain mind, she was drafted in light of the heroines I loved from the old novels who are stubborn, clever, foolish and spirited—an homage of sorts to Lily Bart (House of Mirth), Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre, Caroline Meeber (Sister Carrie), Dorothea Brooke (Middlemarch), Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair), et al.

Parlez Moi Blog reviews H. The Story of Heathcliff’s Journey Back to Wuthering Heights by Lin Haire-Sargeant (originally published in 1992):

Basically she used the tale-within-a-tale technique to describe a train trip that a fictional Emily Brontë was taking back from France when an ill-fated love affair ended. On the train she encounters a man who tells her about a trip he is taking to visit an old friend on her death bed. Soon he persuades Miss Brontë to read a series of letters sent him by this lady and the fun begins. Of course using such a construct for a novel is extremely clever because you can cover any gaps in credibility with missing pages to letters or letters to another party or simple human error but this story doesn’t really rely on this at all. (Kathleen Valentine)

Finally, on Maggie Robinson means romance:

I rescued this handsome edition of Wuthering Heights (circa 1959, I’m guessing), last checked out in 1995. I think the cover artist had a little “inspiration” from John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. (Maggie Robinson)

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Sequels, Talks, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights