The Brontës and other writers

The Yorkshire Post reviews Wise Children's Wuthering Heights.

Such powerful passion was portrayed throughout the play, heightened by the ‘Moors’, led by the charismatic Nandhi Bhebe acting as a chorus, a sinister and brooding presence; stunning set and costume design, and for me the icing on the cake, an amazing live band whose music was an integral part of the play.

There was lots of the promised comedy too, with Katy Owen’s stealing the show with her hilarious portrayal of spoilt Little Linton, as well as playing his mother, Isabella Linton.

Three hours just flew, and despite all the angst, we had a soothing, heartfelt happy ending, a beacon of hope to cling to, that Love Springs Eternal despite all the odds against. (Julia Pattison)

The New Yorker features the work of author Elizabeth Hardwick.

As in all her criticism, Hardwick moves easily between fiction and life, analyzing Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with the same acuity as she does Charlotte Brontë and Zelda Fitzgerald. But the essays are less sprightly than her earlier work; the tone is world-weary, the insights awful in their accuracy. Writing about Brontë, single for most of her life, Hardwick concludes, “Independence is an unwanted necessity, but a condition much thought about. All of one’s strength will be needed to maintain it; it is a fate, a destiny to be confronted if not enjoyed.” (Maggie Doherty)

Los Angeles Review of Books discusses 'The Myth of the Classically Educated Elite'.

 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)

The Michigan Daily reviews Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood.

The story is loosely based on Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and follows the main heroine, Andromeda, as she begins her employment at the eccentric Magnus Rochester’s mansion. However, in this fictional world, a mysterious force called the “evil eye” haunts the mansion, manifesting itself in different forms and terrorizing its inhabitants. Andromeda’s job as a “debtera” (exorcist) is to cleanse the house of these manifestations and free Magnus from his curse, a process during which she conceivably falls in love with him. Thus, Blackwood paints an eerie backdrop for the romance between these two characters. (Zoha Khan)

Il Foglio Quotidiano (Italy) on the work of writer Marise Ferro:

Le sue romantiche sono soprattutto francesi e – se si escludono George Sand ed Emily Brontë – davvero sono rimaste sepolte sotto la polvere del tempo. (Annamaria Guadagni) (Translation)

The Guardian features playwright Moira Buffini.

Her screenwriting career, for both film and TV, has been prolific, particularly in the past decade – Tamara Drewe, the BBC’s Jane Eyre, Netflix’s Sutton Hoo excavation drama The Dig – and she says “I’ve got friends who work in telly, who go: ‘Why do you do theatre? It’s so elitist.’ And yet, when I was young, plays meant such a lot. The fact that you could have a worldview: I didn’t get that from philosophy or politics, I got that from plays, in a real and visceral way. They are a communal experience, both the act of making and the act of watching them.” (Zoe Williams)