Candle in the Wind

“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.” —Ruth Bader Ginsberg

“Life is a brief candle, but love is a craving for time.”

Rest in peace Ruth. Thank you for being your own person—for being a leader and a true visionary. We need strong women with strong values more now than ever before. Of course, I’m particularly fond of any rockstar dynamo who will acknowledge the power of reading to help open doors and lasso dreams. I wonder if the notorious, glorious RGB picked up a copy of The Confessions of Frannie Langton in the past year? 

Something tells me the Supreme Court Justice would thoroughly appreciate Frannie Langton, a Jamaican slave who “travel[ed] across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history.” Literacy bought her thoroughfare. (She was part of a “little colonial experiment” by a depraved scientist in Jamaica, which afforded her an education, despite being enslaved.) Swapped from an “iron cage for a gilded one,” Frannie was gifted to George Benham, a scientist who was purported to be the finest mind in England. Benham’s French wife, Marguerite, forms an unlikely “special” relationship with Frannie. She shattered the Jamaican girl’s belief that every white you’ll ever meet “either wants to tame you or rescue you.” So how do both of the Benhams wind up being murdered at the hands of this mulatta slave? Is she responsible for their untimely deaths?  You’re gonna have to read to find out. It’s true: “The Confessions of Frannie Langton is large, lavish and gutsy, a skilled and intoxicating mash-up of slave narrative, gothic romance, whodunit and legal thriller.” 

P.S. I did some supplemental reading about Sarah Collin’s debut novel. This was pretty insightful: “Frannie is an extreme version of Jane Eyre. She is a powerless child brought up horribly in a horrible place, and her voice thunders in exactly the same way. She often says things that are true, but jarring, such as: “A man writes to separate himself from the common history; a woman writes to try to join it.” Her pronouncements are just like those of Jane, who isn’t afraid to tell Rochester that she loves Thornfield in part at least because she has not “been buried under inferior minds.” Like Jane again, Frannie is awkward and pretentious in her cleverness because she has never been allowed to exercise it properly. Rochester calls Jane a caged bird, but Frannie is a battery hen.” If you love Jane, you’re gonna like Frannie.

Posted by Tracy

The Bees Knees

“Mother Nature knit a careful plan in place, and if you pulled one thread of it loose, the whole thing could unravel. These insects that made most people run in fear were the invisible glue of the earth that held us all together.”

Did someone say sizzling pace or was it fizzling pace? I’ll let you guys decide. I’m a wee bit upset with myself for waiting so long to write about one of my favorite reads of a somewhat miserable 2020. (Not to worry—the glass is still half full, I promise.) Maybe it was subconscious? After all, I had to distribute The Honey Bus by Meredith May to the masses before I let the cat out of the book bag. It’s hard to beat a never-before-heard-of memoir in the mailbox that wraps you up, pulls you in, and penetrates your unsuspecting heart. Don’t believe me? Give me your address.

If you liked The Glass Castle and Educated, you’ll love The Honey Bus. This novel reminded me that we can mend our broken parts if we’re astute enough to see the world through new eyes when life destroys the lens we’ve formerly looked through. May’s childhood lens shatters when her parents get divorced. When her mother hits the proverbial (and dysfunctional) rock bottom, May’s kindhearted grandfather introduces her to the productive world of bees who teach her important lessons about family. Survival too. Already, I want to read it again. I’m 100% with the reviewer who observed that this memoir is “filled with grace, beauty and wisdom, [it’s] like warm honey in the sunshine.” You’ll definitely want to bask in this one.

Posted by Tracy

Good, Better, Best

How are the longer, lighter days of summer winding down already? We’re not remotely ready to slow the reading flow just yet. Maybe Corona will help us keep our sizzling pace? (Come on, two posts a week constitutes some sizzle, doesn’t it?) Here’s a good, better, best post for those of you who are trying to read by the fading natural light.

Good

Coming from a family of pleasers, The Guest Book reminds me that sometimes saying “no” is not necessarily the best answer. The rich and powerful Milton family, hailing from New York, has secrets that neither propriety nor time can dismantle. When decades of family deceit surface on their island in Maine, descendants begin to question their lily-white legacy. This read offers up intrigue, some good ole fashioned elitism with a splash of racism. It underscores the idea that things aren’t always as they appear. So find yourself an island and pick up this 4-star beach read.

Better

Speaking of island reads, The Scent Keeper gave me all the beach feels. If forced to choose between the two, I’d definitely pick Bauermeister’s coming-of-age novel. I’m 100% with Macmillan Publishers about this Reese Book Club pick: “Lyrical and immersive. The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home.” You’re bound to love Emmaline’s fragrant search for her place in the world.

Best

The Vanishing Half earned the highest honors because this recent release has it all: plot twists, family dynamics, passing, racial identities, and (like Rachel) identical twins. One twin sister is trapped in an abusive marriage, only to run back to her rural Louisiana hometown. The other sister tries to escape racism by passing and marrying a prominent white man. Non-parallel paths reveal the stark difference between a black and white world. I’m not the only one singing Bennett’s praises—Kiley Reid, author of Such A Fun Age, had this to say: “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jaqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.”

Guest Post by Sharee

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?

Tracy,

Yes, we’ve reached our happy ending. Heathcliff finally finds joy as his visions of Cathy grow more vivid and he shuffles off his miserable mortal coil to be reunited with her. Or, as we’d say in more clinical terms, he had a series of strokes.

I know, I’m a cynic.

I love your idea of Victorian Lives Matter. I was saddened by the young deaths of the characters in Wuthering Heights, but as you pointed out, their ages were consistent with the times. Tuberculosis is a thief that robbed us of many great people. Check out this list, it’s mind-blowing.

But you asked me why we should read sad stories. Awareness and empathy are two good reasons you provide. I’ll add perspective. It’s good to be reminded that as terrible as things seem, they could probably be much, much worse. Is that also cynical of me? Maybe. There’s a reason sad books so often appeal to us more when we’re young. It’s not that teens thrive on schadenfreude, but when you’re navigating the vagaries of the teenage social scene and have to make important life choices while hormones are waging a battle for your brain, it’s sure nice to be able to think, “Well, at least I’m not trapped in an abusive marriage because I have literally no other options except to drop dead of lung disease.”

You asked a couple of other questions:

Do Heathcliff and Cathy redefine love for the reader?

Are soulmates real?

I think those are intertwined.

We need to think about where this notion of soulmates comes from. It’s typically credited to Plato, who wrote in The Symposium (370 BC) that Zeus created the two genders when he got worried that perfect and complete humans would get too powerful, so he split them in two. This is supposedly why people are looking for their other half—to complete them. I’m not even going to go into the problems of thinking about gender as something other than a social construct, or as a binary. Let’s just say that this line of thinking certainly limits the soulmate options for many people.

What really got in the way of this searching-for-my-other half idea when it comes to romantic partners is that for centuries in most cultures there was almost no choice involved in marriage. Marriage were an institution between two families made for economic reasons. This is still the case in many parts of the world. Marriages were made for money, and people found intellectual, social, emotional fulfillment through platonic relationships with other people, regardless of gender. They weren’t looking for one magical person to meet all of those needs.

This romanticized idea of soulmates really made its big comeback during the Victorian period. Sure, Shakespeare dabbled back in the Elizabethan, but the idea really took off later, especially in Gothic Fiction. The Brontë sisters were key in bringing it back through literature–Emily in Wuthering Heights and Charlotte in Jane Eyre. You might say they lit the fire and it’s been burning strong ever since, as evidenced in countless books, tv shows, and movies. “You complete me,” indeed.

So, do Heathcliff and Cathy redefine love for the reader? They definitely helped shift how the Western world thinks about love for generations. But I’d like to again point out the ages of the characters whose passionate soulmateness we use as a template for perfect love. Juliet was 13 in Romeo and Juliet. Heathcliff and Cathy were teenagers. Jane Eyre was 10 at the beginning of the book and 20-ish when the main narrative ends. Isn’t that when we’re supposed to believe in magical, lightning-strikes love? When we’re teenagers and hormones make everything bigger and more dramatic? Kate Bush wrote her biggest hit from the point of view of Cathy in Wuthering Heights. You know how old she was when the inspiration hit her and she wrote it? 18.

I wonder if we’re all missing the point because we read these stories when we’re teenagers ourselves and fall for the romance. Isn’t that what I wrote in my very first entry for this book club? I remembered liking all the moody broodiness when I was a teenager. We get caught up in the magic of Heathcliff and Cathy’s bananas love, but Brontë wrote an entire book about how that love destroyed them and everyone around them. I’m not convinced she was so pro-soulmate. Let’s not forget, she doesn’t end the book with Heathcliff’s spiritual reunion with Cathy. She leaves us with the love between Cathy Jr. and Hareton–a love that grew over time through proximity and helping each other, rather than the struck-by-lightning soulmate oneness of Cathy and Heathcliff. They loathed each other in the beginning, but doesn’t their love seem happier? Healthier? Maybe Wuthering Heights is a cautionary tale about searching for our one true soulmate. Personally, I think Brontë might very well have agreed with relationship therapist Esther Perel’s assessment:

“This idea of finding “The One” is problematic for relationships. The paradox of choice creates a real sense of anxiety for people looking to find a long-term partner. The expectations of one person to satisfy all of our many emotional, physical, and spiritual needs is a tall order for one individual. Perhaps, instead of looking for a person who checks all the boxes, focus on a person with whom you can imagine yourself writing a story that entails edits and revisions. As a reminder, there are no perfect stories.”

I think that’s where I land. Who needs a soulmate? Gimme someone I can write a story with. I bet Brontë would have loved that. Or at least loved to have that option.

So, here we are at the end. What’s my takeaway? Old me felt frustrated by all the drama. I just wanted to shake each character and tell them to snap out of it. Your wise prompts to remember the context, the lack of choice people (especially women­) had is what kept me reading. And Nelly. I really like Nelly. So, I’m all for doing another book. This time let’s be a little snappier to make it easier for people to follow along. When we announce the book, we’ll determine how many chapters we’ll read per week and we’ll stick to that. Sound good? The real question is what book should we do next? Do you have any other shameful gaps in your literary past, Tracy? I’ll out you as never having read Lord of the Flies, but I can’t take more teenage drama right now, so you’re on your own there. I’ll confess to having read almost no Jane Austen (I know, I KNOW), but since you wrote your thesis on her, I’m afraid my amateur entries would be one long eye roll for you.

What say ye, dear readers? Any suggestions?

Posted by Eliane

Victorian Lives Matter

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Eliane,

I’m sorry you’re sad, my friend. There’s no question Hindley had it rough and, like Michael Jackson, was gone too soon. If we want to dwell in bleakness momentarily, Hindley got quite a few more years than Linton, who died at the unripe age of 17. Catherine and Frances gave up the ghost at 18. (Well Frances did anyway.) By these standards, Isabella, captured longevity; she lived until she was 31. This is a classic case of literature mirroring real life. Tragically, Emily Bronte died at age 30, Anne at 29, and Charlotte didn’t make it to her 39th birthday—tuberculosis robbed each of them of so many years. (Imagine the classics that were buried alongside those sisters. Big Heavy Sigh.)

Why do I feel compelled to ask if it’s important to read sad stories? What do we learn from the sobering stuff? Awareness is the first answer that comes to mind. (Victorian Lives Matter.) I’m especially passionate about gender ideology, I know you are too—we need to understand unjust cultural requirements and unfair expectations for women. We need to learn from the past in order to move forward and stay forward. In the light. Empathy is another important answer to the question why should we read sobering stories? Walk a mile in another girl’s shoes, right? I felt for young Catherine. What a horrible web she got caught in. And I wanted to cry out a warning sound to insecure Isabella.

But as usual, I’ve meandered from the pressing question that spans our letters: Why is Heathcliff considered heroic when he’s deplorable??? The only way to shed good light on this literary conundrum requires a close look at what constitutes a Byronic hero. You’ll remember Lord Byron. His fictional (potentially autobiographical) character Childe Harold was the first to represent an extreme variation of the Romantic hero archetype. Like the Romantic hero, the Byronic hero is a complex person who often kicks against societal pricks. Norms are not for them. Of course, it won’t surprise you that this type of character is psychologically damaged—a tortured soul essentially. And even when an anti-hero behaves benevolently, those acts are tainted by his brooding, dark nature. Here’s the kicker: this type of Byronic guy is typically charismatic, good looking, and a passionate/sensual man—this draws star-crossed females to him. Say what??? Come again, Byron. Why would a woman be attracted to an arrogant, cunning, surly man who swings between extreme states of emotion?

For the same reason we like Hamlet, Mr. Rochester, Jay Gatsby, Dorian Gray, and arguably, Mr. Darcy. They may be fighters, but let’s be honest—their passion makes them serious lovers as well. (It’s not necessarily a juxtaposition.) Let me just put it down in print, once and for all. Heathcliff is a somewhat redeeming character because of his ardent and undying love for Catherine. His heart is moored to hers. It is something to behold, even if it is sometimes crazy.

You can read plenty online about romantic love in Wuthering Heights. I’m running out of blog space, so I will wrap-up with this fact: the love relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine has become an archetype. Their Devotion? Admiration? Obsession?  was obviously significant. Readers must (if only subconsciously) be drawn to the notion of a passionate longing to be whole—to give oneself unreservedly to another—to gain a oneness or whole self or sense of identity back. No wonder Catherine exclaims, “I am Heathcliff!” Do you, Eliane Pohl, think they redefine love for the reader? Their intense emotional passion transcends mortality to forge something that feels seriously supernatural. I love big sis Charlotte’s observation of WH: “In its storm-heated and electrical atmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightening.” And whether we want to admit it or not, that lightening is supplied by none other than Heathcliff and Catherine. Here’s my advice: focus on the lightening more than the storm.

I hate to end this post. It makes me sad. I’ve extracted so much more from Bronte’s cult classic via virtual book club than I would have in a plastic 29-inch tablet arm desk among small high school walls. Please say we can do this again. Soon. Please, I beg you. Let me leave you with one final question to ponder: Are Soulmates Real?

I happily (and anxiously) await your response!

Tracky 

p.s. For more on the features of a Byronic Hero, here’s an interesting read.

No Respecter of Persons

“Nothing’s more powerful than the morphine molecule, and once it has its hooks in you, nothing matters more. Not love. Not family. Not sex. Not shelter.” – Dopesick

Alright, my friends. It’s time to get real here—literally. Here’s a non-fiction must-read coming your way. Before diving in, I do want to sound the warning horn for those who may have sensitivities towards illicit drugs and/or drug abuse.

It’s estimated that 128 people die every day from an opioid overdose (thanks, CDC), which amounts to over 67,000 people needlessly dying each year. Opioid addictions are no respecter of persons. That’s what makes them so deadly – take the drug one time and you can be hooked for life.

Beth Macy’s stunning book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America exposes the shocking truth behind opioids and how the American epidemic unfolded in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As an author and former investigative journalist, her work in the Appalachian areas of West Virginia and Virginia reveals appalling facts and stories, beginning with the creation and rise of opioids at the hands of Purdue Pharma (insert the collective boos the TV networks plug into sports games during COVID). Macy’s book encompasses accounts from hundreds of addicts, family members, doctors, rehabilitation specialists and more as she unravels the details behind this modern-day plague and how victims and their families have struggled for years to overcome the damages caused by the company’s ignorance and greed. 

For me, the brilliance of this book comes from the humanizing of an otherwise abstract concept. Macy’s work with the surviving family members is truly heart-wrenching as they recount their experience with the attempts and failures that come along the road to recovery. In addition to the emotional appeal of the story, many share their experience not only with the past, but their futures—some not only lost family members to death and drug cults, but incurred massive debts from legal costs, medical bills and failed rehab treatments. I give the book a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars.

I’m sure many of you know of or have heard the stories about someone being addicted to heroin or opioids, some being closer to home than others. I have a cousin who has been in and out of jail for the past 15 years, struggling to stay away from heroin. As someone who has never been interested in drugs—I chalk it up to good parenting and a high school soccer coach who threatened to kick us off the team if we were caught within a “sniff” of drugs—it’s hard for me to fathom how people can get so lured into opioids and illicit drugs. However, Macy’s book was the first time I was able to comprehend a smidgen of what these addicts go through and how hard it truly is to stay away from opioids. As one coal miner from Grundy, Virginia told his doctor, “It became my God.”

Bonus: For those who are devout to the docs, Macy has a long-form story on Audible about one of the addicts and her family’s journey to find her and bring her home called Dopesick: Finding Tess. If you’re left craving more (like me), this may be a good place to start.

Guest Post by Michelle

Proverbs 20:21

Tracy,

It's official. This sad book is making me sad. It's so very, very bleak. Do you want to know when the grimness hit me? Way back in chapter 17 when Hindley dies. Remember good old Hindley, the heir to Wuthering Heights? Let me recap: He was snubbed by his father, who preferred the foundling,Heathcliff. When his father died, he took off and came back a while later with Francis, his tubercular wife. Upon his return, he made probably the biggest mistake of his life when he threw Heathcliff out of the house, demoted him to being a servant for the family he was once a part of, and degraded him thoroughly. Of course poor Francis died, but not before giving birth to little Hareton. Hindley was devastated by grief and was an easy target for Heathcliff who extracted his revenge by encouraging Hindley's alcoholism and gambling addiction to the extent that Heathcliff ended up owning Wuthering Heights and ensuring that Hindley's son would remain poor, illiterate, and dependent. Hindley's sister Catherine died and six months later Hindley died. All of that is sad, of course, but you know what the kicker was for me? Hindley was 27 when he died. 27! All of these horrific things happened to people who weren't even 30. Sigh.

And even though our original cast of characters is still so young, here we are with the next generation. At 16, Cathy Jr. is still content to romp in nature (when is the last time you saw a sixteen-year-old "bound" anywhere?) and she is too naive to see through Heathcliff's plan for her to marry the sickly Linton, effectively making Heathcliff the heir to Thrushcross Grange, thus completing his revenge scheme. You would think that Nelly and Edgar would have learned something about trying to keep infatuated teenagers away from each other, but no. They repeat the original Catherine/Heathcliff forbidden love scenario with Cathy Jr. and Linton (let's remember it didn't work well on Isabella either) and actually try to keep apart two bored teenagers with nothing but five miles of moors between them. Hijinks ensue, including love letters smuggled by milkmen, servants bribed with books, and of course the climbing of garden walls. I'm convinced if they'd just let Cathy spend as much time as possible with Linton she would have fallen cooly out of love because boy howdy what a self-obsessed whiner he is! 

Discover & share this Lazy GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

But as usual Tracy, you take a more sophisticated, literary approach to all of this... you asked me if I think that Catherine (first gen) could be considered a madwoman in the attic. I definitely agree with you that she meets the criteria. You then point out that perhaps she was driven to her mad state by the injustice of the expectation for her to be the "angel of the house" in a household she was essentially forced to marry into, despite her love for another man. The more we read, the more this feels like the crux of the story. Brontë hammers us over the head with the problems created by the idea of inheritance, be it financial or the intelligence, manners, and grace that are assumed to come through fine breeding. Again and again she pushes back on the 19th century idea of nature over nurture.

Nelly spells it out for us when she experiences Heathcliff's awfulness and regrets that she didn't get to keep Heathcliff and raise him so that he would have grown into a sympathetic adult. Whatever his origins, she believes the right care could have made him a better person.

Heathcliff is even less subtle when he explains of Hareton and Linton: "one is gold put to the use of paving stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver". Indeed, this demolition of the rules of inheritance is Heathcliff's entire purpose. He enters the story as a stray who was found on the street and does everything he can to destroy the wealthy family he joined and prove that despite their breeding and background, he is able to gain control of all of their assets, as well as their children. For me some of the most heartbreaking scenes are when Cathy and Linton mercilessly bully their illiterate cousin Hareton, who was pushed into illiteracy and servitude by Heathcliff. They are privileged, entitled snobs, and we already know that their story doesn't end well, for if there's one thing Heathcliff cannot abide, it's snobbery.

So here we are, approaching the end of this sad tale, where the person who was born the lowest has effectively flipped the tables, using the strict social structures and rules of inheritance to take everything from the family who initially took him in as a son, and then forced him to be a servant. The snobs are brought low and the foundling wins, but he's still stuck with them and what a miserable lot they all seem to be. Is that really winning? Let's wrap this thing up and decide if our Heathcliff really is a Byronic hero – if anyone can explain that to me, I'm confident it's you. Take us home, Tracy. 

Posted by Eliane

Beastie Boys, Witchy Women…What Next?

Eliane,

If you were dating Heathcliff, I would not stifle my opinion. I repeat, I would not hold back. Just when I think he can’t be more despicable, he goes and does something even more reprehensible than before. It’s one thing to guilt young Catherine, the most heroic character in the novel. To convince her she is killing the man she loves. (Death by lack of letters???) It’s quite another to trap her and Mrs. Dean, by brute force, in an act of blackmail, which will likely speed up Edgar’s death. No wonder the dogs at Wuthering Heights symbolize this mongrel of a man.

Remember when Lockwood initially visits the Heights? He’s terrified when left alone near the hearthstone with Heathcliff’s dogs. Listen to his description of them: A “herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those animals of yours. You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers.” Sound like someone else we know? (Bronte is heavy-handed here: “You’d better let that dog alone, growled Mr. Heathcliff.) And the next day, when they think Lockwood is stealing a lantern, they sic the dogs on him. “Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tales, than devouring me alive,” said the relieved tenant—while Lockwood wasn’t in immediate physical danger, he must have felt demeaned and subjugated by his mongrel landlord. He certainly recognized the possibility of being devoured by Heathcliff. Talk about a beastie boy! (You’ll also remember that Edgar and Isabella, early on, fight over a tiny little testy dog, which could very well symbolize Edgar’s sensitivity.)

Now, onto your comment about Catherine. Of course, you wouldn’t want to be friends with her. You are far too emotionally healthy to be besties with anyone remotely like Catherine Earnshaw Linton. Could she be considered a madwoman in the attic? I think so. How could she not end up in such a frenzied state? The ideal woman in nineteenth century England became known as “the angel of the house.” Virginia Woolf provides a robust job description to accompany that lofty little label: “sympathetic, charming, unselfish, and excelling in the arts of family life, self-sacrificing, and above all pure.” Catherine doesn’t embody one of those virtues, does she? Self-sacrificing? Charming? I don’t think so. And we can hardly squeeze “co-dependency” into that ideal female equation. Is it me or is there any doubt that both Catherine and Heathcliff exhibit behaviors that are consistent with co-dependency? The need to control others, fear of abandonment, chronic anger, a lack of communication skills, the confusion between love and pity—am I forgetting any other major indicators of this behavioral condition/relationship killer? Doesn’t exactly sync with angel-of-the-house qualities, does it?

While I’m asking questions, let me continue with maybe the most important one: How could Catherine be a proper Victorian wife to an unconventional man/sometimes seeming mongrel? Marriage would not provide her with independent legal status. She had no right to any money or inheritance; she could not buy property—she couldn’t even have claim to her own children for hells sake. (Can we say bleak times for women?) Social mores pretty much force Catherine to choose Edgar over Heathcliff. And frankly, she’s unhappy about it at times. I’m sure she loved Edgar for providing for her. But that doesn’t soothe her insatiable itch for her soul mate. Rough stuff when you think about it. A whole lotta push and pull goin’ on there. Maybe we women would all be a little bit mad in those cultural circumstances?!? And so, we’re back to Monty Python once again.

Oh, I can’t even help myself at this point. I feel compelled to listen to “Witchy Woman,” and I need to listen to it now. Please say you’ll join me (scroll to 1:33).

1995 - Castle Rock Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment.Happy Halloween Everyone!!!Because Im a big fan of Seinfeld, I made the effort and completed a list of songs that you will hear during this sitcom. I found several lists from fans and even on .

Posted by Tracy