Saturday 22 March 2014

Day 12 - A Book You Used to Love But Don't Any More

Today's challenge is relying on books that's you've re-read, other wise how can you say you loved it but don't any more unless you've gone back to it and age, experience or some other reason has made you change your mind?


So, I'm going for Wuthering Heights.
Ooooo, anyone shocked?!  I think this a marmite book anyway...and I think if I'd been made to read it at school I possibly would have loathed it.  But, I read it in my mid teens in a self-indulgent, "nobody understands me phase" and the sheer wild, passionate desperation of it all swept me along.  I wanted to be Cathy, I understood her pain and Heathcliffe was the perfect hero.  The atmospheric gloom and unremitting misery of it all - gorgeous!

When I was at Uni, I visited the Haworth and the Bronte Paronage with some friends.  What struck us all was how bleak it all was, all that stuff at school about the environment  inspiring their writing made sense!  I read it again just after that and it still resonated with me...I still loved it.

However, I reread it a couple of years back (now in my forties!) and although I quite enjoyed it, I found it all "overdone", it just didn't work for me any longer.  I still think it's perfect for how I was then, but not now.  So although I don't love it, there will always be a small soft spot tucked away for Wuthering Heights and the impossible all encompassing love it describes. 

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