I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff (Kate Bush)

Olivier as Heathcliff (1939)

Wie geht's?

Having now finished Emily Brontë's novel, I'm a tad stunned at how much I'd misinterpreted the novel in my imagination.

Summed up by - what an evil bastard Heathcliff was, opposed to the poor doomed figure I'd always believed him to be. Olivier's body language is spot on, by the way.

Heathcliff really is a nasty, vindicative, vengeful, megalomaniac figure. Cathy has him summed up when she describes Heathcliff's character to the tragically naive Isabella Linton.

During morning tea at school the other day, when I mentioned I was reading Wuthering Heights for the first time, there were a couple of incredulous - really?? reactions.

But there must be heaps of 'classic' novels that people haven't read, right?

I suspect many people fudge it and say they've read Dickens, Austen, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Hawthorne, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Steinbeck, Frank Sargeson, Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, and so on. But in reality, maybe they watched a film version, or a condensed version or something.

For what it's worth, thanks to my interest in literature, I've read all of the above over the years, and yet I'm continuing to play catch up, such as Wuthering Heights.

Sitting in the heavy hitters' reading pile: Steinbeck, Dickens, Emerson, and Murakami.

Next up on the reading pile is a lighter one though: Anne Tyler's Celestial Navigation (she's always brilliant) and then maybe Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth before tackling another biggie. I find McEwan a little hit or miss, so we'll see.

Love and peace - Wozza 

Out on the wily, windy moors we'd roll and fall in green (Kate Bush)

Emily Jane Brontë

Wie geht's?

This one's about Wuthering Heights. The novel by Emily Brontë. You may have heard of it.

Why is this one about Wuthering Heights?

Well - because of my ignorance. That's why?

You want details?

Okay. Sure. Read on!

An amigo recently suggested the Kate Bush song of the same name for one of our Spotify playlists. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me a while to realise that it wasn't based on a Jane Austen novel, but Brontë's. Secondly, and this is in some ways even worse - I realised I'd, shock horror, never read the novel.

Sharp intake of breath.

Unlike Austen's novels, it had never been presented to me for reading at school or during my university years and I'd never taught it. Hence, never read it.

Plus, the subject matter had never interested me - a tragic love story from 1847? No thanks.

Ignorance upon ignorance upon ignorance!

That needed rectifying. So, I bought a copy from The Little Red Bookshop.

And I'm hooked. It's magnificent.

I have also realised something from reading it. I wasn't ready for this story until this precise moment. The book, the story has chosen me - right now, right here.

It's her only novel as she died young, aged 30, from TB, yet this novel, published the year before she died, is utterly captivating in 2022.

It makes sense to me and I'm glad I didn't read it in my youth - I wouldn't have enjoyed/understood it without my life experiences to this point, which have included living in England on a few occasions.

Although she died young, she lives on in Wuthering Heights for generations to come.

Love and peace - Wozza