I’m always looking for the next book to read. It’s an intuitive process for me; sometimes I’m sure I know what I’ll be reading three or four novels ahead, and sometimes, I’ll just grab something off the shelf when the whim catches me. I particularly enjoy the latter–I love waking up and finding myself fixated on some title I’d never thought of before.
It’s a good reason to work in a library. A couple weeks ago, I got it into my head that I should finally read Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. The recent movie adaptation directed by Emerald Fennell had put the book back in the news, and it’s one I’d wanted to get around to eventually–I’d been assigned it in high school, but couldn’t stand it as a teen, and I was curious to see if I’d better be able to appreciate the story as an adult.
I was, thankfully. I had a lot of fun revisiting Heights, although it is not, on the surface, a particularly “fun” novel; over the course of its three hundred plus pages, we read about physical and psychological abuse, rape, obsession, and misery, and nearly every major character dies young. But there’s a tremendous vitality and passion moving the story forward, an energy that makes it thrilling to read no matter how grim things get.
I would highly recommend Wuthering Heights to anyone, especially those who have seen the new movie and are curious about its source material. (From what I’ve heard, they make for very different experiences.) It’s an intense story about the awful things people do to one another when they’re trapped in the circumstances of their culture and birth, and, sadly, it doesn’t seem to have aged a day.
