Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte: **7/8

This book contained some cool imagery and a good tone for most of its length, but I found myself having a hard time connecting with the characters sometimes because of the soap opera nature of the story. I love him, I hate him, I love him, I hate him. Really, it's a soap opera. After a while, the characters' motivations occasionally seemed suspect, and this took something away from the otherwise haunting atmosphere. In general I liked the characters, though, and I enjoyed the book's style and attitude. It was a very satisfying and compelling read, with sometimes fantastic prose and lots of delicious olden-style words.

It also has a particularly cool narrative structure, which is worth a little extra to me. I won't tell you about it because it's something you can experience on your own if you happen to read it, but I will say that sometimes for me the way a story is told is often more interesting than the story itself. Paul Auster's Leviathan, for example, uses the narrator as the vehicle for a story that's as much about the narrator's friend as it is the narrator. Specifically, it's their similarities and differences, as seen through the eyes of the narrator, that are so fascinating. I liked that a lot. I generally like first person narrative over third person, and in particular I'm wary of the third person omniscient style, especially the way this technique is frequently used in thriller novels where the author drops us briefly into the mind of the killer, or some other such nonsense that is put there to raise the tension in the story. To me those thrills always end up feeling cheap - like the jolt that a quick musical burst gives us in a slasher picture. That's not a real thrill, it's a manufactured one. In the same way, third person omniscient POV, if not handled well, always feels to me like the author is cheating. I'm getting a little off subject here because there is no cheating in this book. The tale is well-told and a generally enjoyable and atmospheric example of good gothic fiction.
(fall 2001)

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