Whispering up close and screaming far away

The Badger Herald recaps the events at the recent Wisconsin Book Festival 2025:

On Thursday, October 23, author Jane Hamilton hosted a conversation about her newest release, “The Phoebe Variations.” A coming-of-age story inspired by “Jane Eyre,” it depicts the titular protagonist as she meets her biological family upon encouragement from her adoptive mother. (Evan Randle)

The Phoebe Variations

by Jane Hamilton

Zibby Media

EAN: 9798991140287

Seventeen-year-old Phoebe was never interested in her birth family. But on the cusp of her high school graduation, her adoptive mother, Greta, insists on a visit to meet her biological parents and siblings. The encounter is a jolt, a revelation that derails Phoebe.

With the help of her best friend Luna, Phoebe runs away—as far as their friend Patrick O’Connor’s chaotic home, where she hopes to go unnoticed among his thirteen siblings. But when Phoebe asks Patrick to chop off her hip-length hair, she’s suddenly transformed. Patrick’s older brothers can’t help but notice the striking, Peter Pan–like stranger who has suddenly appeared in their midst.

What starts as an adolescent rebellion soon spirals into a whirlwind of self-discovery and unexpected connections. As she grapples with her shifting identity and strained relationships, Phoebe must navigate the tumultuous road out of girlhood and chart a new and unknown course.

Brit+Co posts an IG of Hannah Dodd, from Bridgerton, sharing her reading list:

Ahead of Bridgerton season 4, Hannah Dodd spilled on her current reading list, which includes a few buzzy titles that are coming to the screen! (...)

Wuthering Heights follows Cathy and Heathcliff, who grow up together and begin to feel a very strong bond, but whose class divide threatens to keep them apart forever.

"I feel like I should be embarrassed that I haven't actually read that," Hannah admits. (Chloe Williams)

News outlets and websites that are excited to see Wuthering Heights 2026: East Bay Times, El Observador (Costa Rica), Netflix Junkie, The Wing, Cineworld, ScreemHub Australia, The Star, Primicia, El Periodiquito, Exclaim!, inStyle, El Periódico, Porta da Estrella, IGN Deutschland, CNN...

Not only the movie, but the Charli XCX album. Check Pitchfork:

Charli XCX makes her big return not with an electropop club classic, but an album born from working with director Emerald Fennell on her new film adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel. Wuthering Heights is subdued and blown-out, lusty and lonely, whispering up close and screaming far away; its opening track “House” featuring Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale puts those contrasts into context. So does “Chains of Love,” the more straightforward pop single, where pangs of desire ring out in blemished forms. (Nina Corcoran)

Esquire:

Filmmaker Emerald Fennell sent Ms. XCX a copy of the script to her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel, hoping she might contribute a song. Charli responded that she’d like to take a shot at a full album/score. “I wanted to dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured, and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar,” she wrote on Substack. “I was fucking IN.” Her primary collaborator for the unlikely follow-up to Brat was producer/songwriter Easyfun, and they were inspired by a quote from John Cale saying that the main rule for Velvet Underground songs was to be “elegant and brutal”—so much so that they enlisted Cale for the first single from Wuthering Heights, the foreboding “House.” (Alan Light)

Or Parade, NME, Brooklyn Vegan...

Far Out Magazine takes a different direction, and they are sure that the film is gonna fail:

Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights has been adapted various times over the years, but Emerald Fennell, director of Saltburn, is set to bring forth a deeply erotic and perverted version, where there’s no doubt that her take on the tale of doomed romance, violence, and generational trauma will be laden with shock for the sake of it.

Saltburn had as much depth as a bathtub, which she filled with cum-infested water in the name of her supposedly perverse tirade on mainstream cinema, and if the trailer for Wuthering Heights is anything to go by, this’ll be a similar deal, only this time she’ll be destroying precious source material in the process. The internet has been up in arms for a while over the casting of Margot Robbie as Cathy and especially Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, not least because the character isn’t meant to be white or pretty, so while we can hope Fennell may pull a Sofia Coppola and surprise us with the anachronistic choices, including a Charli XCX soundtrack, it’s not looking very promising for the young-ish woman. (Aimee Ferrier)

Rolling Stone firmly disagrees:

“Heeeeeeathcliffff, it’s meeeee, Cath-yyyyy, I’ve come home, I’m so cold!!!” Emily Brontë’s novel of love and death on the Yorkshire moors gets yet another adaptation — but this time, Promising Young Woman/Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell is behind the camera, and she’s got two super-hot A-listers playing every bibliophile’s favorite pair of doomed lovers. (No disrespect, Romeo and Juliet!) Jacob Elordi, a.k.a. the star of Euphoria, Frankenstein, and your dreams, should bring the brooding sensuality as Heathcliff, and Margot Robbie, a.k.a. Barbie, Harley Quinn, and three-time Oscar nominee, puts her hand to her dampened-with-lust brow as gothic-lit’s first couple. We’ve heard rumors that whenever you watch the trailer online, any kettle within 100 yards of your laptop will simply start boiling of its own accord. (David Fear)

Las Vegas News thinks that Wide Sargasso Sea is a forgotten classic in need of a comeback:

 Okay, some lit majors know this one, but it deserves mainstream recognition as the brilliant prequel to Jane Eyre that completely reframes Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic.” Rhys gives voice to Bertha Mason, reimagined as Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress destroyed by patriarchal cruelty and colonial violence in Jamaica. The novel’s dreamlike prose and postcolonial perspective transformed how readers understand the original text. Despite winning the W.H. Smith Literary Award, it remains overshadowed by the canonical text it challenges, with BookScan data from 2023 showing Jane Eyre outselling it roughly fifty to one. (Matthjias Binder)

Times Now News vindicates Jane Eyre as a radical novel:

 When 'Jane Eyre' was published in 1847, it unsettled readers who expected female characters to be compliant, grateful, and quietly resigned to their circumstances. Charlotte Brontë offered something far more disruptive. Jane Eyre was poor, plain, orphaned, and socially insignificant, yet she insisted on dignity, moral agency, and emotional equality. Nearly two centuries later, that insistence still feels radical. Not because Jane shouts or rebels flamboyantly, but because she refuses to compromise her inner authority. (Girish Shukla)

Cannon Beach Gazette informs that the  Cannon Beach Reads book club includes Jane Eyre in its 2026 selection.