H: The Story of Heathcliff's Journey Back to Wuthering Heights - Hardcover

Lin Haire-Sargeant

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671777009 ISBN 13: 9780671777005

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1992

Synopsis

Out in the world on his own again, Heathcliff is groomed into a gentleman, encounters old rivals, and prepares to face his beloved Cathy again in a speculative novel on Heathcliff's three-year absence from Wuthering Heights.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Sequelmania strikes again as Haire-Sargeant presumes upon Emily Bront‰'s stark, strange masterpiece, delivering a story that achieves a slight success as a literary pastiche but never becomes a satisfying work of fiction in its own right. The novel commingles the author's invention with elements in both Emily and Charlotte Bront‰'s fictional worlds. The literary sisters themselves appear as characters, interacting with Charles Lockwood, Nelly Dean, Edgar Linton, et al. It all begins with Charlotte sharing a railway compartment with Charles Lockwood, who shows her a long letter from Heathcliff to Catherine Earnshaw recounting his doings in the three years he was absent from Wuthering Heights. This letter was contained in a letter from the Heights' old housekeeper, Nelly Dean, in which she confesses that she intercepted Heathcliff's missive to protect Catherine, and now, on her deathbed, wonders whether she did the right thing. While Mr. Lockwood sleeps, Charlotte reads Heathcliff's letter, an account to Cathy of his flight to Liverpool, where he met up with one Mr. Are; the older gentleman took him as his proteg‚ with the aim of refining him. Heathcliff took instruction well, motivated by his desire to be worthy of his beloved Cathy. A surprise meeting with his rival Edgar Linton at Mr. Are's house ended with an improbable act of vengeance on Heathcliff's part. Mr. Are took Heathcliff abroad with him and there fell in love with a young governess named Jane Eyre; upon returning to England, he was about to marry her when it became known that he had a wife, Bertha, who was insane and confined in the attic of his house. Throw in the occasional italicized stream-of-consciousness rumination by Catherine Earnshaw and you have a veritable peat bog of a novel in which a solid footing is hard to attain. Stick to the high ground of the original instead. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Embroidering the classics is a venerable literary tradition that sometimes goes awry. Here, however, Haire-Sargeant, a professor of 19th-century literature at the University of Massachusetts, conjures the dark, brooding air of Wuthering Heights with striking authenticity. This refreshingly well-spun fantasy re-creates Heathcliff's three lost years, between the time he fled Yorkshire to seek his fortune to his return to claim Catherine Earnshaw. The events of this time are related in a long-lost letter to Cathy, delivered on the day of her marriage to Edgar Linton, which meddling housekeeper Nelly Dean had kept from her mistress. Haire-Sargeant's inventive story takes liberties with more than Wuthering Heights ; she also invokes Jane Eyre and Pygmalion . amed characters--wild, tempestuous Cathy, who pouts and postures in this version; steely, mousy governess Jane Eyre; a more jovial Mr. Rochester, recast as Heathcliff's savior Mr. Are; and even Charlotte and Emily Bronte themselves pop in and out of the novel, making it seem at times like an overwrought drawing-room comedy. The romance novelist's urge for a happy ending threatens to overwhelm Bronte's original intentions, but a wry final twist prevails. Some Bronte devotees may be appalled at Haire-Sargeant's temerity, but most readers will enjoy this nicely executed tale.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0671777009
• ISBN 13: 9780671777005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 292