Something Refreshingly Modern

The Christian Science Monitor reviews Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels by Rachel Cohen:

Her readers will be more forgiving on that point. Many of them have likely experienced the same degree of beneficial concentration in times of stress or sorrow, whether it’s Austen or the Brontë sisters or Shakespeare. But they also won’t find anything appalling in these pages. Cohen has taken her fascination with – and personal dependence on – one great author and transmutes it into something any reader in the world will find downright marvelous. (Steve Donoghue)

The Irish Times interviews the author Olivia Kiernan:

Martin Doyle: Who is your favourite fictional character?
O.K.: Again there are too many to whittle down. So many stand out. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley, Tartt’s Richard Papen, Barry’s Willie Dunne, Mantel’s Cromwell, Süskind’s Grenouille, Austen’s Mrs Bennett, Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, Brontë’s Heathcliff. I could go on and on!

Financial Times and The Arts Desk review the film How To Build a Girl:

Her refuge, of course, is her bedroom, where the pictures on her wall — celebrated faces of history — come to life in their frames to advise how to channel her talents. The result is a neat visual flourish, and testament to a particular close-knit Britishness. Alongside Freud (Michael Sheen), Cleopatra (Jameela Jamil) and more, Elizabeth Taylor is played by Lily Allen, daughter of the film’s producer Alison Owen, Charlotte Brontë by Mel Giedroyc, sister of director Coky.  (Danny Leigh)

Director Coky Giedroyc does a stellar job at bringing the book to life, returning to the big screen after 20 years in television. From little camera flourishes to full dream sequences, there’s a boundless energy and imagination to the film’s presentation. This is on full display with Johanna’s wall of historic icons, from the Brontës to Marx, who offer somewhat questionable advice to our lead’s problems. No spoilers, but much fun stems from figuring out who’s playing who. (Owen Richards)

Similar mentions can be read on CineVue and Radio Times.

Another recent usual suspect in Brontë news is the novel Mexican Gothic. Today in the New York Times:

The surreal is also at the heart of Mexican Gothic (Del Rey, 301 pp., $27), Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s stylish and edgy new horror novel. While the book draws inspiration from Gothic classics like “Rebecca” and “Jane Eyre” — there is a spunky female protagonist and an ancient house filled with disturbing secrets — its archly intelligent tone and insightful writing make “Mexican Gothic” an original escape to an eerie world. (Danielle Trussoni)

The Washington Post is concerned about the impact over education by the Covid-19 pandemic:

Think of it this way: A lucky few, many well-off and white, are getting the chance to hire a 21st-century Jane Eyre. (Business Insider reported this year that the cost of what is essentially a private, in-home tutor is anywhere between $25 and $60 an hour.) As for the rest? A number of states prioritized opening bars and tattoo parlors over getting schools up and running safely. Now, students will suffer the consequences of the education gaps in reading and math as a result.

The Portland Press Herald has an even more specific concern. The health of teachers:

I know this is an impossible time and that I am lucky to be on parental leave for the first few weeks of the impending school year, but I implore school districts and communities not to ignore the people responsible for educating their children. I know teaching remotely isn’t ideal. It’s not how any of us want to communicate with kids, either. I don’t want to teach “Wuthering Heights” over Zoom. I know my colleagues don’t want to cobble together art projects or science labs or history lectures online. But at least we’ll stay alive if we do. (Samantha Francis-Taylor)

RTÉ reviews an English translation of Malicroix by Henri Bosco:

The author's ghostly atmospheric tale then makes him a modernist cousin of Emily Brontë and Edgar Allan Poe, although there are presumably more convincing French exemplars. If you like to linger long in poetic reflection, to bask in the fallen leaves of long-tailed sentences, strung along on clauses, this one is for you. (Paddy Kehoe)

Alex Trebek shares once more his love for Wuthering Heights in People:

“I’ve got (a) framed image. Jeanie gave it to me,” reads an excerpt from his book. “It’s a line from our favorite movie, ‘Wuthering Heights’: 'Whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same.' That’s the way I look at our relationship. We are one soul in two bodies.” (Gillian Telling)

Hindustan Times (India) explores hidden places of New Delhi:

This afternoon the trees skirting the pathway are shaking quite violently in the breeze, making the setting appear like a scene from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

Myanmore (Myanmar) talks about the works of the artist Thoe Htein and for some reason mentions Emily Brontë:

Emily Brontë may have penned “Wuthering Heights” from the comforts of her own home, hardly having any contact with the outside world, but in an accelerated time like today, no one really lives in a vacuum anymore; so the experiences the artist lives through are necessarily part of whatever they create. (Min Pyae Sone)

Roster Con (France) lists classics to read or re-read:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Orpheline, Jane Eyre est recueillie à contrecœur par une tante qui la traite durement et dont les enfants rudoient leur cousine. Placée ensuite en pension, elle y reste jusqu’à l’âge de dix-huit ans. Elle devient alors gouvernante pour le noble M. Rochester, dont elle tombe bientôt amoureuse, mais les obstacles seront nombreux. (Sandrine Klam) (Translation)

A quote from Anne Brontë opens an article about Southern gastronomy in The Star (Port St. Joe, FL); another quote, now by Charlotte Brontë, is included in an article on al femminile (Italy); this article in The Conservative Woman is an example of a growing danger: the appropriation of the Brontës by one particular side in the on growing revisionist (it's not the same as recontextualizing) approach to western culture. We rather prefer Palatinate's way:

I immediately felt reunited with the ‘hunger, rebellion and rage’ that filled the pages of Brontë’s masterpiece, Jane Eyre. Not only did I find myself keenly in tune with Brontë’s determination to publish in a patriarchal industry (originally printed under the name Currer Bell), but I admired her eponymous heroine who used her education and freedom of thought to liberate her from societal oppression. There was something refreshingly modern about Jane’s feminism; when presented with the reality of Rochester’s insane wife, she chose the side of her fellow woman and refused to marry the man she loved. Moreover, Jane’s vivid interiority highlighted the importance of expressing one’s feelings, something that is so vitally important in our modern world. (Sarah Henderson)

LJones66 posts about Jane Eyre 1997.