Heathcliff without fangs is scary enough.
Another literary classic is hijacked by toothy interlopers, this time courtesy of Gray, aka romance novelist Colleen Faulkner.
The formula is simple: Take a classic in the public domain and appropriate most of the author’s prose, sprinkling in references throughout to the ghoul du jour. While Jane Austen’s ironic worldview lends itself to horror spoofing (think books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2009), Wuthering Heights is “dead” serious. Gray reiterates, more or less verbatim, large chunks of Emily Brontë’s prose, interspersing various references to vampires, a plague of which has apparently been running rampant on the same Yorkshire moors trod by Heathcliff and his eternal love, Catherine Earnshaw. The structure and major plot elements of the original are kept intact. Nelly, a housekeeper who served both the Earnshaws and the Lintons, Brontë’s fatefully linked fictional families, relates the history of Heathcliff, Catherine and their descendants and siblings to a tenant who has come to occupy Catherine’s former marital home, the Grange. Heathcliff, a gypsy orphan brought home by Mr. Earnshaw, patriarch of Wuthering Heights manor, grows up with the Earnshaw siblings, Hindley and Catherine. Although Catherine and Heathcliff are childhood playmates and soul mates, she capriciously decides to marry their closest neighbor’s son, milquetoast Edgar Linton of the Grange. Her defection launches Heathcliff on a path of revenge—he marries Edgar’s sister Isabella out of spite—that will end only with tragic early deaths, and the virtual enslavement by Heathcliff of Hindley’s son Hareton, his own son Linton and Catherine’s daughter Cathy. Heathcliff’s depravity makes him a difficult character to elicit sympathy for, but somehow Brontë manages this. Not so Gray in this mashup, where the main focus of suspense is whether Heathcliff, a known vampire slayer, is himself among the undead. Will Cathy, secretly training to be the first female vampire slayer, be his nemesis? Anecdotes describing mayhem perpetrated by the bloodsuckers lend a disconcerting layer of gallows humor to the proceedings.
Heathcliff without fangs is scary enough.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5408-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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