Storm Hill

The Guardian has an obituary of the fabulous Rachel Cooke reminding readers of her Virago Book of Friendship, published last year.

The Virago Book of Friendship (2024) is an anthology of excerpts that was her excellent idea, and ranges from the tragic (Jane Eyre) to the comic (Bridget Jones) and fraught (Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield). (Susanna Rustin)

Rolling Stone reports that Charli XCX has dropped the new music video for her song Chains of Love.

Charli XCX has dropped an appropriately dramatic new music video for “Chains of Love,” the latest single from her upcoming album tied to Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights adaptation. 

Directed by C Prinz, the clip finds Charli performing the song in a grand but empty dining hall where she contends with an unseen force that flings cutlery and candlesticks in her direction, and lifts the giant table off the floor. At the cathartic climax, Charli stomps on the glass table, sending up a storm of shards.

Charli released “Chains of Love” last week, the song arriving fast on the heels of her other recent single, “House,” with John Cale. Both songs will appear on the Wuthering Heights companion album, which Charli crafted with songwriters/producers Finn Keane and Justin Raisen. Wuthering Heights the movie — which co-stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi — is set to arrive Feb. 14, 2026, while the album is slated to drop Feb. 13. (John Blistein)

Also on Uproxx, Billboard and others.

A contributor to Vogue says that, 'My Love Of Wuthering Heights Is Why I Also Love Terrible Men'.

Wuthering Heights tells us that love should hurt. Actually, it should burn. Lacerating your heart and excavating your soul, it will, in the words of Emily Brontë herself, drive you mad. Fans of the 19th century classic were reminded of this last week, thanks to the release of the first full-length trailer for Emerald Fennell’s highly contentious but much anticipated adaptation, which stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

The trailer depicts Cathy (Robbie), meeting Heathcliff (Elordi), as children before becoming embroiled in what it describes as “the greatest love story of all time”. While it’s not clear how far Fennel has strayed from the 1847 novel – the film has raised eyebrows among literary types who’ve pointed out that Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned” in the book, while Cathy wears a red latex dress among other things in the film – it’s set to be a major cinematic event, with original songs by Charli XCX and a Valentine’s Day release date.

Make no mistake: Wuthering Heights – which focuses on the intense bond that develops between Cathy and Heathcliff as children into young adulthood, and the subsequent devastation that occurs when social mobility prevents them from being together – is a heart-wrenching tale, one that offers up meaningful commentary on everything from class and revenge to generational trauma. For me, though, it has always been about one thing and one thing only. And that’s Heathcliff, AKA literature’s original fuck boy. Brooding, handsome, and troubled beyond repair, he epitomises everything straight women are supposed to run from and yet somehow run towards. Or, at least, I do. (Olivia Petter)

A contributor to Jezebel is a brand-new fan of Jacob Elordi.

Yes, I’m brand new to…whatever his fandom his called. The Jacobis? The Elordians? Team Jacob? And I’m sorry it took me this long, but I’m ready to pay my dues and collect my t-shirt. [...]

And yes, there is plenty to criticize about the Wuthering Heights trailer and (I suspect) the upcoming film. Like, are we really calling this a “love” story—and could this really be based on one of the greatest English novels of all time?? Fennell herself admitted that this “primal, sexual” interpretation isn’t necessarily faithful to the source material. And while I was skeptical of that creative choice at first, now that I’ve seen Elordi’s shoulder-length hair, I could not be more grateful to Fennell for just going with her gut here. (Though it must be said that Brontë’s Heathcliff certainly wasn’t white.) But there will be a time and a place for all those think pieces, but that is not here and not now. (Lauren Tousignant)

Meanwhile, a contributor to The Chosun Daily discusses 'Wuthering Heights and the Autumn Scent'.

Of course, Brontë’s novel doesn’t explicitly contain such a scent. Yet, as I follow the “mad” (no love has ever suited this word better) love between Heathcliff and Catherine, the relentless fate and curses spanning generations, and the windswept manor that feels like the true protagonist of those stormy hills, I sense a familiar, chilling odor at the tip of my nose. The smell of burning leaves, the earth’s resolve before winter. Literature is beautiful because it creates sensations through language alone. Though we’ve never seen Heathcliff’s face, heard Catherine’s voice, or smelled the manor, we feel and experience them through a novel written in a foreign language over 170 years ago.

The second of the famous Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—she wrote only this one novel in her lifetime. Published at the age of 29, the book received little acclaim at the time, with many critics condemning its characters as vulgar and immoral. A year later, she died after a cold caught at her brother’s funeral worsened into pneumonia. I sense the same scent in Emily’s life.

The original title, “Wuthering Heights,” is a proper noun, making the Korean title—literally “Storm Hill”—a near-mistranslation. Yet some mistranslations are more literary than accurate. For each of us has our own “stormy hill,” and ascending it always carries a familiar smell—the dark shadow left by late autumn. (Moon Ji-Hyuk)

More autumn as The Boar has an article on 'The original autumn girl: Anne Shirley’s whimsical legacy'.

It is impossible to write about the autumnal aesthetics without mentioning the dominance of Halloween in the autumnal months. Inspired by the pagan festival of Samhain, where it was believed the veil between the living and dead was weakened, and later the Eve of All Saints’ Day, Halloween has become the pinnacle of the gothic and horror lovers’ year. Autumn, therefore, becomes the backdrop for the gothic canon: Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Libby Davis)