Gothic bodice-rippers

Study Break thinks that the new Rebecca fails as a Gothic tale.

The gothic is about madness, insanity, seeing things that aren’t there and doubting whether or not you still have your mental faculties. Look at “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, or “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. These are hearty, gothic novels dripping with the occult and wrestling with the issues of morality, psychology and madness. “Rebecca” the novel does that. “Rebecca” the film falls comically short. (Emily Jewett)

On Vulture, 'fashion designer turned novelist' Douglas Stuart describes the novel As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann as

my pure pleasure read. It’s sort of like my Wuthering Heights in that it really rips my bodice.

LitHub interviews Betsy Bonner about her debut memoir, The Book of Atlantis Black.

JV: The plot is so suspenseful and you’re dealing with a lot of emotionally heavy material. But what deepens the suspense and emotions for me are not the overtly dramatic moments, but the softer moments from childhood and adolescence.

Like, you and your sister buying V.C. Andrews paperbacks at the local grocery store or you getting ready—being teenagers and you’re watching her get ready and apply eyeliner, curl her hair, you’re copying her and she gets mad, or you sharing a waterbed with her and her listening to Sheryl Crow while you’re reading Jane Eyre. Like these very quiet, wonderful moments. And I think those are so necessary to building this out.

A lot of times people think with memoir you need all of these dramatic moments, and that that sort of stuff is filler. But you handled the material so well and I’m curious about when in the writing process you wrote those scenes, those softer memories, and then just how you went about the process of remembering. Which is hard, and it can be also emotionally painful to go through and think back. What was that like for you?

BB: The very beginning of writing this, as I see it now, was that I had my notebook open and imagined going into the hotel room where she died (or was said to have died). I wanted to be writing poetry, but I had to find out, as best I could, what the hell happened in Tijuana; and more importantly, why. And I couldn’t bear the idea that my sister was gone and I would never hear from her again. (Jeannie Vanasco)

Writer J.P. Pomare is proud of not having read many classics in this interview on Stuff (New Zealand).

What “must read” book have you not read? Go on, fess up.

I could probably count on both hands the pre 20th century novels I've actually read. No Tolstoy, Brontë, Austen, or Dostoyevsky. No Hardy, Doyle, Verne. Also, no great regrets about it either.

A Condé Nast Traveler (Spain) interviewer asks poet Olga Novo whether Galicia in Northern Spain is like Yorkshire.

CNT. ¿Cuáles fueron esas primeras lecturas?

O.N. Mi primer acercamiento a la literatura se produjo de manera oral. Conservo el recuerdo vívido de mi madre recitándome romances cuando yo tenía tres años. Yo no sabía que aquello era poesía, pero me atraía su musicalidad. Siempre pedía más. Cuando descubrí que aquellos romances se los había leído mi abuela, me maravillé: las mujeres ocupan un lugar fundamental en la transmisión de la cultura gallega. En mi casa no había libros, ni diccionario teníamos. El manual escolar recogía varios poemas y yo los leía en voz alta mientras escuchaba el bramido de las vacas de nuestra casa. Mi hermana, ocho años mayor que yo, siempre ha tenido vocación de pedagoga. Acabó estudiando magisterio. Disfrutábamos mucho recorriendo juntas el prado y leyendo libros, cada una, una página. Así terminamos clásicos como el Lazarillo de Tormes, La Metamorfosis y El Quijote.

CNT. Esa imagen me evoca a las hermanas Brontë… ¿se parece Vilarmao a Yorkshire?

O.N. No: es menos salvaje y áspero. Mi tierra es más dulce. (Translation)

The Eyre Guide reviews Mr. R: A Rock & Roll Romance by Tracy Neis.