Essie Fox
Orenda Books, 12 February 2016
Available as: HB, 287, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB/ PB): 9781917764421
I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of Catherine to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.
It is, I think, 40 odd years since I read Wuthering Heights, in the early 80s when I was doing O level English lit. This wasn't one of our set books, but our teacher was keen to make sure we read much more widely. I remember that the introduction to the edition we read made much of the Brontës' father's "Celtic" ancestry as a factor in their romantic temperament - you don't get criticism like that today.
I tend not to re-read, so my memory of the events in the novel was hazy - ideal, really, for this retelling since it meant I wasn't looking forward for what I knew would come next. It also meant my sympathies and appreciation of the characters could shift, uninfluenced by the later story, the perfect frame of mind to enjoy this version.
I think it's important to recognise that in the Wuthering Heights universe there are no absolute heroes and villains, and no "likeable" characters. Everyone behaves badly, everyone is worthy of sympathy. In that respect, and others, Catherine isn't a new story, it is proper Wuthering Heights but - and here's the difference - told by Cathy, rather than narrated, in hindsight, by Nelly Dean. Essie Fox uses a rather clever device to make this possible, one consonant I think with the subtext of the original novel and which handily telescopes the 20 or so years period that the story takes to unroll, and gives a real sense of immediacy and, well, jeopardy to the events - in contrast with the hindsight-tinted perspective of the original. (And we're spared Mr Lockwood, who isn't event mentioned by name, just - in one or two places - as "the tenant").
Fox also takes the opportunity of this being Cathy's own story to enlarge on parts that Dean is only passing on from Catherine herself - who Fox makes unreliable, or at least incomplete, in what she tells her maid. This gives some space to develop aspects about which the original book is silent. For example, Heathcliff learns the truth of his background and relates this to Cathy - something that is then a significant motivation for Cathy - but Cathy never tells Nell the details. In that respect, Catherine is therefore a retelling, not the retelling - other authors could make other choices. I do think though that Fox's choices are deeply true to the novel, and in taking over the book's characters, she captures something genuine in their relationships and history that makes this more than simply a glossing of the original. The people you'll meet here are vital, human, and true to Brontë's original.
All this makes Catherine more than simply a retelling, it's a rich story in its own right. There is tragedy here, and room for pity and empathy even with the apparent villains: like Wuthering Heights itself, Catherine is something of a gale of emotion and feeling - longing, lust, hatred, regret, jealousy - and if you're going to enjoy this book you need to be on board for that. It won't suit everyone! In my view, the power of Emily Brontë's original is here in Catherine, undiminished, but this retelling addresses matters which the climate of the mid-19th century could not allow, as well as revisiting aspects where modern sensibilities raise issues, or ask questions, which the original didn't.
Catherine is a grand, sweeping read which takes nothing away from the original novel - it is, as I said, only a retelling, not the retelling, I can imagine alternatives that take different paths, but what a retelling!
I would recommend.
For more information about Catherine, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below.
You can buy Catherine from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.
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