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A review by cupiscent
Black Spring by Alison Croggon
3.0
This is a tricky one. I cannot say I enjoyed reading it; as a fantasy retelling of [b:Wuthering Heights|6185|Wuthering Heights|Emily Brontë|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388212715s/6185.jpg|1565818], it's rife with the bleak melodramatic tragedy of the original, with lashings of "this is the North; we do what we want", and a distanced formality in the storytelling that's easier to read than the original, but still not facile or sparkling. On the other hand, the world is fabulous, the Vendetta enthralling (though, apparently and sadly, kind of pointless to the actual story) and the addition of witchery really puts the sexual politics of the plot into starker relief. There are so many of those elements that I loved, it was just sometimes a chore to pick them out of the grey windswept scenery.
In the end, I am left with some of the same feeling that Wuthering Heights inspired: oh God, these people all deserve each other and I cannot be bothered with their strangely stoic hysteria. But it's ameliorated somewhat by the Big Question of this book, wound through its bones and tied into endless iterations of self-perpetuated circumstance, which is: why do these people let themselves live like this?
And in that aspect, it's a profoundly thought-provoking book that will stay with me for a while.
In the end, I am left with some of the same feeling that Wuthering Heights inspired: oh God, these people all deserve each other and I cannot be bothered with their strangely stoic hysteria. But it's ameliorated somewhat by the Big Question of this book, wound through its bones and tied into endless iterations of self-perpetuated circumstance, which is: why do these people let themselves live like this?
And in that aspect, it's a profoundly thought-provoking book that will stay with me for a while.