Six Degrees of Separation – from Wuthering Heights to One Night That Changes Everything

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. February’s starting point is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The movie is getting terrible reviews - I enjoyed this quote from the Boston Globe:

Emerald Fennell’s overdone adaptation casts Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, Margot Robbie as Cathy, Alison Oliver as Isabella, and Hong Chau as Nelly. If you don’t know who those characters are, you should have paid more attention to your English teacher. The most positive thing I can say about the umpteenth version of this material is that it continues a grand tradition of cinematic literary adaptations. That is, students will fail the “Wuthering Heights” question on their final exam if they watch this instead of reading the book.

Six Degrees of Separation - From The Turn of the Screw to The Return of the Twelves

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up.   This month’s starting point is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1843-1916), a gothic novella about a governess sent to the desolate countryside to care for two orphans, with blood-curdling results. 

I have recently felt that Henry James is everywhere (not to mention his brother William - I had a class in college that met in the building named for him).   My first book is The Summer Before the War (2016), a historical novel by Helen Simonson set before WWI that I liked so much I persuaded my book group to read it.  The story includes a character based on Henry James although it took my mother to point this out to me.   A few years ago she and I visited Rye together, where the book is set and where James spent his last years.   In fact, he wrote The Turn of the Screw while living in Rye.