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elsie07's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
annarella's review against another edition
5.0
A collection of short stories all well written and interesting.
I'm a of Wuthering Heights and was happy to read this book as I think that the different writer were able to recreate the spirit of the book.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
I'm a of Wuthering Heights and was happy to read this book as I think that the different writer were able to recreate the spirit of the book.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
girlwithherheadinabook's review against another edition
3.0
For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2019/07/review-i-am-heathcliff-various-authors.html
Two hundred years since the birth of Emily Brontë, sixty-one years since the birth of Kate Bush (the two of them born coincidentally on the same day), the myth of Wuthering Heights is still strong in the popular imagination. Is Heathcliff the Byronic hero or just mad, bad and dangerous to know? This is the question at the heart of this collection of stories. Compiled by Kate Mosse, it features chapters by established writers on the theme of Cathy Earnshaw's famous declaration. What though does that phrase really signify? What does it mean to be Heathcliff?
I Am Heathcliff is a kind of follow-up to Reader, I Married Him, a similar collection which was published around Charlotte's bicentennial. I find it hard to imagine anything similar being put together for Anne next year. While this is unfortunate given her novels were the most subversive of the three, I think this is less a sign of her being under-appreciated (she definitely is) but rather more because it would be difficult to identify an equivalent 'iconic line' from her books on which to pin a collection. To be honest, even with Heathcliff, it feels like a stretch. Reader, I Married Him had stronger thematic unity as an anthology because it was centred around the idea of a woman taking control, of her marrying the man rather than vice versa. With so many interpretations of Cathy's line, I Am Heathcliff feels more disparate.
Predictably, some of the stories are more effective than others. The book opens with Louise Doughty's particularly strong 'Terminus', a woman checks into a seaside hotel, hoping to stay ahead of her abusive husband. When he tracks her down, he says 'I am you. And you are me. We can never be separated Maria, because we are the same person.' The idea of someone getting into your head, of not being able to separate yourself from him - it unnerved me. Then Hanan al-Shaykh's 'My Eye is a Button on Your Dress' packed another real shudder as a woman sought to return to her lover only to discover ... well. Be careful what you wish for.
Sophie Hannah's chapter 'Only Joseph' follows a mother trying to protect her daughter from an obsessive classmate, underlining the fact that a guy creeping after you all day long is about as romantic as persistent skin rash. Then there is 'Anima', in which a child observes a fox. Joanna Cannon's 'One Letter Different' observes sibling bereavement, with Ellis (less than subtle nod to Emily Brontë's pen name) visiting the Yorkshire moors with her foreshortened family. Lisa McInerney charts a destructive love affair with 'Five Sites, Five Stages', leaving the reader reeling as the two lovers crash apart.
But then there were some others which left me more ... unsure. I found the connection in Dorothy Koomson's 'Wildflowers' to be a little tenuous. Even the otherwise breathtaking 'Amulets and Feathers' also felt a creature apart. Then there were other stories which steered a little too close. Erin Kelly's 'Thicker Than Water' brought the Wuthering Heights story into the modern era, something which never really works. Her obsessive 'Heath' sits in his hot tub and stalks 'Cat' on social media, trawling through her various accounts and thinking he should be done within two hours. When she dies, he desecrates her grave and is hauled off by the police, finally triumphant over 'Ed'. While clever enough, it feels far too neat and tidy to ever match the passion of the original. More of a 'Why bother?'
The thing is, I've never really been a fan of Heathcliff, or at least not of the model of romantic hero that he symbolises. The brooding, grumpy narcissist constantly in need of an ego massage. No thank you, it's a swipe left from me. But what is interesting about the choice of title is that while at first glance it seems to be about who Heathcliff really is, the truth is the inverse. It was Cathy who said it. Cathy who claimed to be him. Heathcliff was not even there as a witness, having slunk off in a sulk a few minutes before when he heard of her plans to marry Edgar. He never heard how Cathy felt about him, only that it would degrade her to marry him. This is a missed connection between the characters. Would it have changed things? Or were they just too dysfunctional to ever be happy together?
While I was so-so about Alison Case's spin-off novel Nelly Dean, her chapter 'The Cord' was fantastic. Heathcliff strides away from the house after hearing Cathy's words, furious. He is determined to break the connection between the two of them, to get away from her. She is not Heathcliff. He is and she cannot speak for him. Even more thought-provoking though was Michael Stewart's 'Heathcliff Is Not My Name', which makes the point that before he was Heathcliff, he was someone else. Mr Earnshaw called him after a child who had died but this was not his name.
Still, the best chapter of all? The one that had me punching the air? Without a doubt, Louisa Young's 'Heathcliffs I Have Known'. Her narrator lists the men she has men who have tried to take control, who have hurt, who have raped. The Heathcliffs she has known. And then she rounds on Cathy herself and tells her bluntly that her ghost had better not be running over that moor to return to the man who has done her daughter such wrong. Cathy would be far better to stand up for her child and claw the bastard's eyes out. Unfortunately I am on the record as not having enjoyed Louisa Young's writing in the past but here I was jumping up and down and whooping in agreement. Preach!
Modern phenomena such as Fifty Shades and Twilight indicate that this kind of obsessive love remains strong within the popular imagination. Yet increasingly literary critics purse their lips, saying that the romance between Heathcliff and Cathy only goes to show that Emily Brontë was a mere parson's daughter who never experienced love. Yet what about the parallels between Heathcliff and Rochester? On the other side of the playground, revisionists scowl at Heathcliff and cite #MeToo. What kind of a monster woos his wife by killing her dog? Who declares their love by grave-robbing? Really, who would ever want a love like Heathcliff's? A life like Heathcliff's? But then, if we despise him, why are we still talking about him and men like him? I feel that if we could answer that question, the mystery of human relationships would be an awful lot clearer.
Examining the statement 'I Am Heathcliff' in the twenty-first century leads to some thorny discussions. At its best, I Am Heathcliff examines gender politics and the extremes to which we can be driven by desire. How we can try to write our love story onto another person without consulting them. How we can try to live with love after loss. Wuthering Heights is not a tidy book and this not a tidy short story anthology but the sixteen stories within are nonetheless engaging and thought-provoking. If, like me, you like to Brood about the Brontës, look no further. And let's cross our fingers and toes that the Borough Press think up an anthology for Anne too because she seriously deserves it.
Two hundred years since the birth of Emily Brontë, sixty-one years since the birth of Kate Bush (the two of them born coincidentally on the same day), the myth of Wuthering Heights is still strong in the popular imagination. Is Heathcliff the Byronic hero or just mad, bad and dangerous to know? This is the question at the heart of this collection of stories. Compiled by Kate Mosse, it features chapters by established writers on the theme of Cathy Earnshaw's famous declaration. What though does that phrase really signify? What does it mean to be Heathcliff?
I Am Heathcliff is a kind of follow-up to Reader, I Married Him, a similar collection which was published around Charlotte's bicentennial. I find it hard to imagine anything similar being put together for Anne next year. While this is unfortunate given her novels were the most subversive of the three, I think this is less a sign of her being under-appreciated (she definitely is) but rather more because it would be difficult to identify an equivalent 'iconic line' from her books on which to pin a collection. To be honest, even with Heathcliff, it feels like a stretch. Reader, I Married Him had stronger thematic unity as an anthology because it was centred around the idea of a woman taking control, of her marrying the man rather than vice versa. With so many interpretations of Cathy's line, I Am Heathcliff feels more disparate.
Predictably, some of the stories are more effective than others. The book opens with Louise Doughty's particularly strong 'Terminus', a woman checks into a seaside hotel, hoping to stay ahead of her abusive husband. When he tracks her down, he says 'I am you. And you are me. We can never be separated Maria, because we are the same person.' The idea of someone getting into your head, of not being able to separate yourself from him - it unnerved me. Then Hanan al-Shaykh's 'My Eye is a Button on Your Dress' packed another real shudder as a woman sought to return to her lover only to discover ... well. Be careful what you wish for.
Sophie Hannah's chapter 'Only Joseph' follows a mother trying to protect her daughter from an obsessive classmate, underlining the fact that a guy creeping after you all day long is about as romantic as persistent skin rash. Then there is 'Anima', in which a child observes a fox. Joanna Cannon's 'One Letter Different' observes sibling bereavement, with Ellis (less than subtle nod to Emily Brontë's pen name) visiting the Yorkshire moors with her foreshortened family. Lisa McInerney charts a destructive love affair with 'Five Sites, Five Stages', leaving the reader reeling as the two lovers crash apart.
But then there were some others which left me more ... unsure. I found the connection in Dorothy Koomson's 'Wildflowers' to be a little tenuous. Even the otherwise breathtaking 'Amulets and Feathers' also felt a creature apart. Then there were other stories which steered a little too close. Erin Kelly's 'Thicker Than Water' brought the Wuthering Heights story into the modern era, something which never really works. Her obsessive 'Heath' sits in his hot tub and stalks 'Cat' on social media, trawling through her various accounts and thinking he should be done within two hours. When she dies, he desecrates her grave and is hauled off by the police, finally triumphant over 'Ed'. While clever enough, it feels far too neat and tidy to ever match the passion of the original. More of a 'Why bother?'
The thing is, I've never really been a fan of Heathcliff, or at least not of the model of romantic hero that he symbolises. The brooding, grumpy narcissist constantly in need of an ego massage. No thank you, it's a swipe left from me. But what is interesting about the choice of title is that while at first glance it seems to be about who Heathcliff really is, the truth is the inverse. It was Cathy who said it. Cathy who claimed to be him. Heathcliff was not even there as a witness, having slunk off in a sulk a few minutes before when he heard of her plans to marry Edgar. He never heard how Cathy felt about him, only that it would degrade her to marry him. This is a missed connection between the characters. Would it have changed things? Or were they just too dysfunctional to ever be happy together?
While I was so-so about Alison Case's spin-off novel Nelly Dean, her chapter 'The Cord' was fantastic. Heathcliff strides away from the house after hearing Cathy's words, furious. He is determined to break the connection between the two of them, to get away from her. She is not Heathcliff. He is and she cannot speak for him. Even more thought-provoking though was Michael Stewart's 'Heathcliff Is Not My Name', which makes the point that before he was Heathcliff, he was someone else. Mr Earnshaw called him after a child who had died but this was not his name.
Still, the best chapter of all? The one that had me punching the air? Without a doubt, Louisa Young's 'Heathcliffs I Have Known'. Her narrator lists the men she has men who have tried to take control, who have hurt, who have raped. The Heathcliffs she has known. And then she rounds on Cathy herself and tells her bluntly that her ghost had better not be running over that moor to return to the man who has done her daughter such wrong. Cathy would be far better to stand up for her child and claw the bastard's eyes out. Unfortunately I am on the record as not having enjoyed Louisa Young's writing in the past but here I was jumping up and down and whooping in agreement. Preach!
Modern phenomena such as Fifty Shades and Twilight indicate that this kind of obsessive love remains strong within the popular imagination. Yet increasingly literary critics purse their lips, saying that the romance between Heathcliff and Cathy only goes to show that Emily Brontë was a mere parson's daughter who never experienced love. Yet what about the parallels between Heathcliff and Rochester? On the other side of the playground, revisionists scowl at Heathcliff and cite #MeToo. What kind of a monster woos his wife by killing her dog? Who declares their love by grave-robbing? Really, who would ever want a love like Heathcliff's? A life like Heathcliff's? But then, if we despise him, why are we still talking about him and men like him? I feel that if we could answer that question, the mystery of human relationships would be an awful lot clearer.
Examining the statement 'I Am Heathcliff' in the twenty-first century leads to some thorny discussions. At its best, I Am Heathcliff examines gender politics and the extremes to which we can be driven by desire. How we can try to write our love story onto another person without consulting them. How we can try to live with love after loss. Wuthering Heights is not a tidy book and this not a tidy short story anthology but the sixteen stories within are nonetheless engaging and thought-provoking. If, like me, you like to Brood about the Brontës, look no further. And let's cross our fingers and toes that the Borough Press think up an anthology for Anne too because she seriously deserves it.
helengoose's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
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