The Guardian reviews
The Seaside: England’s Love Affair by Madeleine Bunting.
Bunting begins in Scarborough, a place she remembers from her 1960s childhood as a delightful dream of donkey rides and 99 Flake ice-creams. The resort was founded, as all England’s smarter spas were, in themid-18th century as a place of medical marvels, where the terminally ill mixed with the worried well as they strolled along the elegant promenade or flirted mildly in the assembly rooms. In 1849 the painfully ill Anne Brontë elected to go to Scarborough because, if the sea breezes didn’t cure her consumptive lungs, it would at least be a spectacularly picturesque place to die.
So it is ironic that a resort founded on a reputation for putting the roses back into people’s cheeks is now languishing permanently on the sick list. Scarborough’s streets may still be quaint, but all that loveliness disguises a tragic set of health statistics. Rates of what Bunting calls “diseases of despair” exceed the national average, and not by a little: for suicide it’s by 61%, for alcohol-related conditions 30%. Hospital admissions for self-harm are 60% higher. There is also obesity, the consequence of food poverty and a local economy in which sugar is cheaper than protein. In Clacton, 180 miles to the south, Bunting reports that a quarter of pupils in reception are classed as overweight and among those over 18 it is nearly 70%. (Kathryn Hughes)
In 1845, Charlotte Brontë paid a visit to the village to help her friend Ellen Nussey to prepare the vicarage for the return from honeymoon of her curate brother and his bride.
During her three-week stay in the area, she came across several buildings that she would use as the basis for locations in her novel Jane Eyre.
North Lees Hall
This battlemented Elizabethan tower house, romantically situated on a steep moor side above the village, closely matches Charlotte’s description in Jane Eyre of Thornfield Hall, the home of Edward Rochester. The hall can be visited on Heritage Open Days. (Mike Smith)
La Provincia (Spain) finds a Brontëite in writer Carmen Palliser.
La novela tiene un componente romántico y de misterio muy importante. Estas eran las dos característica propias del Romanticismo de Bécquer o de las hermanas Brontë. ¿Puede verse como una vuelta a esta literatura algo olvidada?
Amo a Bécquer y a las hermanas Brontë. Especialmente, adoro Jane Eyre; esta es una novela de referencia para mí. Así que me gustaría contestar que sí, pero tal vez sería demasiado pretencioso por mi parte creer que puedo traer de alguna forma a la actualidad el legado de estos grandes autores. Flor de saúco es una novela que busca simplemente entretener al lector, mantenerlo con la nariz enterrada en sus páginas; enamorarlo y quizás enfrentarlo a las convenciones sociales. [...]
¿Hay autores que le hayan marcado de alguna forma?
Por supuesto, y no todos del género romántico. Por destacar algunos… Charlotte Brontë, George Orwell, Milena Busquets y, la actual finalista de los premios Planeta, Cristina Campos.
(Alberto García Saleh) (Translation)
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