Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Book Review Sep 27, 2023

My review

4/5 stars

This is a story that I've always assumed that I'm familiar with, because I've watched several adaptations of it over the years (my favourite was the Tom Hardy version in 2009), but actually getting round to reading the book has proved me wrong.

While the basic premise of the story is what I expected it to be, the amount of time spent on resolving Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship caught me off guard. From watching the adaptations that I have, I expected the book to be a story of how a doomed relationship impacted two families, but what I got was a story of how an unstable man can impact the lives of everyone around him. Cathy's death happens way earlier in the book than I expected, and the majority of the second half of the book is actually about the next generation of the two families, and their interactions with Heathcliff.

The book also wasn't as dark as I had anticipated. While I can appreciate that it must have felt very daring at the time of release, and it certainly wasn't a happy-go-lucky family saga, it didn't hit me with the sense of doom that I had expected when picking the book up - it was just a very sad tale about a very sad man.

As an additional note, I listened to a production narrated by Joanne Frogatt and she did a fantastic job.

Book blurb

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries.