No more interpretive dances

 The Telegraph & Argus talks about Bella Ellis's latest novel, The Red Monarch:

The Brontës’ work has been re-imagined in many interpretations, from silent movies to pop-up comedy gigs.

But in her new novel The Red Monarch, best-selling author and Brontë fan Bella Ellis gives the literary sisters’ own story an intriguing twist.

It is of course set in Haworth, in 1846, and the Brontë sisters’ first poetry collection has just been published, potentially marking an end to their careers as amateur detectors, when Anne receives a letter from her friend, Lydia Robinson.

Lydia has eloped with a young actor, Harry Roxby, and following her disinheritance, the couple have been living in poverty in London. Harry has become embroiled with a criminal gang and is in great danger after losing something very valuable that he was meant to deliver to their leader.

The desperate and heavily pregnant Lydia has a week to return what her husband supposedly stole, or he will be killed. She knows there are few people who she can turn to in this time of need, but the sisters agree to help Lydia, beginning a race against time to save Harry’s life. In doing so, our intrepid Brontë siblings come face to face with a terrifying adversary, even to the toughest of the slum dwellers - The Red Monarch. (...)

Bella Ellis is the pseudonym of best-selling novelist Rowan Coleman. The Red Monarch was published this week, with a book launch at Wave of Nostalgia in Haworth.

A Brontë superfan, Rowan has a collection of more than 1,000 rare and first editions and is a supporter of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. She’s the author of 14 novels including The Memory Book, The Summer of Impossible Things, and co-author of Mirror, Mirror, debut novel by actor and model Cara Delevingne. (Emma Clayton)

The Scotsman interviews  Keara Donnachie, PR and Marketing Manager at Scottish Book Trust:

I associate certain books with different times in my life, sort of how people have memory recall with certain scents. I first read Jane Eyre when I was 16 and remember passing the paperback to my gran to read afterwards. I still have the same copy, the spine cracked with age and use, and even though my gran is no longer with us, the memory of us sharing the story will stay with the book on my shelf. 

Los Angeles Review of Books regrets that the 'classically educated elite' don't really know their classics: 

As I’ve grown older and gotten to know the literary world better, I’ve seen little interest among even literary elites in Classic literature. To the extent that people are excited by literature, it’s by comparatively recent writers: Žižek, Barthes, Naomi Wolf, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Toni Morrison. Among “Classic” writers, only Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Shakespeare retain any hold on the imagination of the average writer, while the influence of the Italian Renaissance, Middle Ages, and Greek and Roman antiquity is virtually nil. And this is among people who make the written word their business. (Naomi Kanakia)

Codelist mentions Macbeth 1948 film adaptation by Orson Welles:

Welles himself defined it as “a perfect cross between ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Bride of Frankenstein'” and, indeed, its glorious use of light and atmosphere was reminiscent of the first films of the Universal still marked by the forms of the old continent. (Arjun Sethi)

The Daily Mail briefly comments on Emma Rice's Wuthering Heights production:

You could say the same of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which gets a makeover in Emma Rice’s wild and woolly production. The action – which needs trimming – takes place under leaden skies.
The show features Rice’s DIY style, including puppets, props and a multi-tasking cast.
Moments of humor (produced by Katy Owen) are found amid all the passion, revenge, and brooding. Ash Hunter plays the abusive Heathcliff and Lucy McCormick is Catherine. Kate Bush would love this. (Robert Gore-Langton)

BookPage recommends The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Christopher Baldwin and Shaenon K. Garrity

Haley is so exuberantly dedicated to gothic romances that her exasperated teacher orders her to stop writing book reports on Wuthering Heights (and no, she cannot do an interpretive dance about it instead!). (Linda M. Castellitto)

Outlook India explores the 'adoption' genre in Bollywood:

Slipping through the pages of Gulshan Nanda, Ved Prakash Sharma and Su­r­­e­ndra Mohan Pathak to pilfer ‘ins­p­iration’ for their pulp movies has been a hoary pastime of Bollywood filmmakers. At times, however, tCohey turn surreptitiously to Vic­torian literature as well. And Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights appears to be a perennial favourite.
From Dilip Kumar’s Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966) to Rajesh Khanna’s Oonche Log (1985), Hindi movies have borrowed, nay stolen, its plot revolving around Heathcliff, an orphan who falls in love with the daughter of the man who brings him home. Good for Ms. Bronte that she did not live long to see what Mumbai’s movie moguls did to her all-time classic or, for that matter, to her famous anti-hero. (Giridhar Jha)

Le Bleu du Miroir (France) reviews the film Los Otros 2001:

Mais avant de hanter le cinéma de genre et nos imaginaires, Les autres est avant tout un film lui-même hanté par de nombreuses présences. Celle, d’abord, de la maison dans laquelle il a été tourné, El Palacio de los Hornillos, qui fait écho à toutes les grandes grandes demeures de la littérature anglaise du XIXème siècle et du début XXème –Wuthering Heights, Manderley, Thornfield Hall ; celle du genre gothique, qui rôde durant tout le film et se découvre dans les voilages d’un autre siècle, les pierres tombales, l’enfermement des personnages et leur piété ; celle des fantômes fuyants qui persécutent les héros ; mais surtout et par dessus tout, celle de son actrice principale, Nicole Kidman, qui livre ici une performance inoubliable (qui lui vaudra d’ailleurs une nomination aux Golden Globes et aux BAFTA). (Lena Haque) (Translation)

Letralia (Spain) interviews the writer Carmen García Valderrama:

Jorge Gómez Jiménez: ¿Puedes ha
blarnos de tus lecturas? Autores favoritos, libros que te hayan marcado.
C.G.V.: ...) El primer amor me precipita a la novela romántica con esa urgente necesidad de entender qué está pasando. Con tantas hormonas en contravía la poesía me da respuestas un tanto ambiguas. Cumbres borrascosas, María, Eugenia Grandet, Anna Karenina, me llevan a pensar que “demasiadas mujeres se miran en un mismo espejo”. (Translation)

La Nouvelle République (France) announces the bd Grand Boum award to Édith Grattery for her career which of course includes her two-part Les Hauts de Hurlevent comic adaptation with Yann. (EDIT: Also in  Bodoï, 9è Art or ActuaBD).

Elle (Spain) recommends a luxury edition of Wuthering Heights as a Christmas present.

Finally, Cadena SER (in Spanish) devotes the program Un Libro Una Hora to Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey:La dureza de ser una institutriz.