Heathcliff

I am no lover of sequels, prequels, and the like. However, I have to recommend this one as I've really enjoyed reading it recently. I don't even know why I bought it, it was a whim. And it was a good one, I think. The first part of the book is mostly a letter written by Heathcliff himself, a letter found after his own death and given to Lockwood. Risky, eh? But the language is so very like Heathcliff, it's almost too good to be true. I quite couldn't believe it! The rest of the story is told by another person, and of course the register is different. But the story fits in quite nicely and for me it fills in that three year gap very accurately. I suppose those three years have been imagined very differently by lots of people and the results have sometimes been quite horrible. But I really liked this one. You can see that Heathclif's life during those three years is not put in an absurd manner: he certainly has a rough time, learns a lot (for bad, obviously, but how right it all seems when you know how he's going to use what he has learned upon returning to the North!), grows up, goes abroad, plots his revenge...but it's still the same character from Wuthering Heights. He's still Heathcliff. Nothing to do with Haire-Sargeant's book, what was its name? Well, you might know it: Heathcliff meets Jane Eyre. Oh, how I hate that kind of stuff! Thanks for reading.

This book can never measure up to the original, however... it is very much in the spirit of the Heathcliff that Ms. Bronte created. There was no effort to clean up his diabolical nature, but there are insights into his character. He encounters people who are actually evil rather than just weak and petty...and it is rather touching to remember that he is just a young man who can still be shocked by some behaviors. This is a straight forward tale of how he becomes the wealthy and more polished Heathcliff who comes back to Cathy. Good for die-hard Wuthering Heights fans who want more than just the original.