Wuthering Heights

Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: This book is exciting and interesting, a good combination. If you have ever seen the movie, it doesn't tell half of the story. It stops just as the book gets better! I thought that reading this book would be a burden and a bore. I was wrong, it is now one of my favourite books.

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Summary: The True Test of Love.........
Review: Emily Bronte has perfectly illustrated a tale of passion, love and despair. One of those couples seen in the same light as Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Catherine portray lovers in another story of love lost. This book is impossible to put down, and it will surely haunt you long after you have finished it.

Rating:
Summary: Good story but hard to get into.
Review: It was very hard for me to get into this story. The words were very old-fashioned, and some scenes seemed to go on for a long time. I thought it had a good plot, but I really only liked the first half. It took me a long time to finish this, and when I finally did, I felt that it ended abruptly.

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Summary: I HAD TROUBLE REACHING WUTHERING HEIGHTS!
Review: Charlotte Bronte is a great writer. I read Jane Eyre twice and comprehended every word, every nuance. Wuthering Heights was another matter. So much of it was obtuse. Just a little while ago, I read a very helpful review here by an English teacher no less, who said he had trouble comprehending the story the first time around, but he has read it again and this time it was a completely different and positive experience for him. I certainly have benefited from this particular review because now I am going to read Wuthering Heights again with a different attitude. It is not easy reading; it is a deep book. You have to concentrate, but I know I can do it, and I am going to do it! Even though I saw the movie before I read the book (I thought the movie starring Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier was outstanding), parts of the book were still obtuse. If I hadn't seen the movie, I suppose the book would have been a total imposssibility. I don't mean to seem so negative about Wuthering Heights, but I have never in my life read a book where I had to concentrate so much; it took the pleasure out of reading it.

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Summary: "Toto, We're Not in Kansas Anymore"
Review: Enjoying a great novel sometimes requires a willingness to accept confusion, at least initially. Many readers who have trouble appreciating "Wuthering Heights" are put off by the work's first 50 pages. The novel begins with a focus on a fastidious hypochnodriac who is not actually the main character and who never even has a first name: Mr. Lockwood, a tidy little man who enjoys observing love from a distance but is terrified by its proximity. He has no idea what's in store for him. Urged by his doctor to rest his over-wrought nerves, Mr. Lockwood rents a beautful manor in the apparently idyllic Yorkshire moors of northeast England, a decision he will soon both deeply regret and enjoy. In the novel's opening pages, Bronte successfully integrates Mr. Lockwood's mistaken conclusions with the reader's: 1)Mr. Heathcliff must be a gentleman [He isn't]; (2)The young lady by the hearth must be Heathcliff's wife or perhaps that of the coarse young man who also lives there [She's neither; she's actually a widow, and the coarse young man should be the house's master]; and (3)Catherine Earnshaw is a spectral demon with the power to return to earth in order to continue terrorizing those whom she once loved [Maybe she is; maybe it's only a dream], and so on. All of these errors in judgment are completely understandable, and during the course of the novel they are all satisfactorily explained. But initially, the situation Mr. Lockwood, as well as the reader, encounters is very, very confusing. Mr. Lockwood gets nearly everything wrong, and to a reader accustomed to lucid foreshadowing, Lockwood's mistakes are perplexing. What IS going on in this strange, strange house? Confusing the reader, however, is actually part of Bronte's strategy to transport Lockwood, and the reader as well, to a world of pure imagination, a realm of stormy passion where all thoughts are expressed in poetic speech (regardless of the damage they may cause), a world where one character is another character as well ("Nelly, I am Heathcliff")--in short, a world that would be utterly abhorrent to the reader's rational faculties but proves irresistibly attractive to his emotional and aesthetic dimensions. So the novel's first few pages deliberately disorient the reader, encouraging him to abandon an everyday world where the apparent equals the reality, where most sane people restrain themselves, spending most of their days and nights in balanced, rational pursuits. Bronte's novel, restricted geographically to the Heights and the Grange, is a buttonhole in reality, through which the reader slips without fully realizing it from a more or less rational environment into a world where ghosts are not entirely unexpected, lovers dig up the corpse of their beloved, drunken louts drop their babies from stair landings, middle-aged men repeatedly curse--even brutally batter--younger women, and lovers punish each other to prove the depth of their love. "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!" Bronte's world would disintegrate if it were evaluated by generally accepted rational, moral precepts. Bronte instinctively realizes this fact and, within a matrix of purposeful confusion, seductively transports the reader from an everyday world of clearly articulated right and wrong where love is primarily a dalliance into one where love consumes entirely, lasts well beyond mere physical death, and is not the least bit concerned with traditional concepts of right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, acceptable or unacceptable. With meticulous attention to specific details and complex time frames, Bronte ultimately explains away all of Mr. Lockwood's and the reader's initial misunderstandings. If the reader--allowing for some intentional confusion in the novel's opening pages--continues reading, he will be rewarded by Bronte's ability to transport him into an utterly fascinating but repulsive, familiar but impossible world that is the essence of imaginative literature. Bronte's novel--populated by comic and tragic characters, set in beautiful but deadly landscapes, focused on restrained civility juxtaposed with passionate intensity--undoubtedly deserves its rank among the world's greatest romances and imaginative literary creations.

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Summary: One of the Greatest Pieces of Literature Ever Written
Review: Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights during a time when the people of England were not ready for such an intense and passionate novel. There-for it was not given the recognition it truely diserved until many years later, long after she died of T.B. Wuthering Heights is truely a work of art. The story envelopes the reader into a mysterious world with very heartful characters. The narration is perfect, in that you are seeing and hearing everything that the narrator says and sees. Emily's writting style is perfect in that she always gives just the right amount of details in her accounts. As a matter of fact, the story is so well written that a reader who really takes the time to understand and enjoy the book will soon find himself/herself attatched to it. It is almost impossible to put down. Over all, Wuthering Heights is a book not to be missed, but reader be warned, it is a book that takes a lot of effort to read. A lot of paragraphs require heavy analyzing to make sure that you catch the hidden meanings and important foreshadowing. In think that there really isnt much of an age restriction, but if your reading this book for pleasure, and your under fourteen, you wasting your time.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Literature
Review: Part of the charm of this novel is that it remains very readable 150+ years after its original publication date. The language of the book flows in a wonderful way, carrying the reader fully into another time and place. Emily Bronte was a true artist; telling a story of passion, pride, jealousy and vengeance using ordinary characters we can all relate to. An unforgettable literary masterpiece!

Rating:
Summary: Dispense with received wisdom
Review: As with all literature, one person's joy is another's despair. Friends recommended this book to me - "you've read a lot of fiction, but you've read nothing until you've read "Wuthering Heights"" (cue knowing nods around the table, grunts of approval etc etc). And it did appear high on each of the lists of great books of fiction I have seen. So, I gave it a go. What a disappointment - the book is a total mess: a disjointed, confused narrative which in my opinion gave the impression that the author really didn't have a clue as to what she was trying to say (indeed if she was trying to do anything other than place words on paper). Yes, I did finish it, but I'm not going to undertake an ex post facto rationalization and convince myself that it must be great literature, and then join with others in recommending it to the uninitiated. 19th century England certainly produced far better fiction than this.

Rating:
Summary: A reader that wasn't too mature
Review: The novel, "Wuthering Heights", was a book that delt with much older situations. The novel was good, but it didn't interest me. The relationship with Catherine and Heathcliff wasn't a relationship that I appreciated. She was treated bad as a young child, and had to live with a man who loved her, but miss- treated her. So in my opinion, the novel was too mature for me and I'll probably be interested in the novel when I get older.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant work of Genius
Review: Emily Bronte is clearly the genius of the family. If you liked Jane Eyre, you will love Wuthering Heights. It is *better* than Jane Eyre, it made me like Jane Eyre less in contrast with Wuthering Height's intense passion. This book is extremely unique and insightful. Don't let the first two chapters confuse you, don't put down this novel, you won't regret it.