Wuthering Heights

3.5 stars

It turns out histrionic swooning causes pregnancy. I did not know that before I read this book.

I read it years ago but I got the audio and it was decent! I felt like I got more from it this time

I never thought I would love this book so much, but it's utterly phenomenal. It's so deceptively well-crafted. I am in aw.

The copious amount of abuse was a bit too much for me. Made the book hard to read at times. Also not happy that Heathcliff had a peaceful death at the end. I hated that guy.

i don't get it i'm sorry. reading this was like trying to wade through hot treacle

Well, I thought this would be a somewhat dark romance. Well it was maybe a little darker.

I am honestly so unsure where to place this? Like in terms of my star rating. I mean on one hand it was good. I was just maybe not a fan of HOW it was executed. I am generally not a fan of jelousy like at all. So that entire consept of what it is about was just not that great from me. Expecially when the jelousy of somone being closer to a person that you are. I mean make the fucking effort and fix it. Jelous of money I can understand ish but just... well idk, personal opinions.
The whole idea is executed good tho. Considering that the entire consept is something I am kind of against. I like the thought of having the patience, like being abel to WAIT, and be patient for a mounth. let alone YEARS. So that is unbelible for me.
I do not like just how.... not great all the caracters are. They just have little to no likebility, like in general. Atleast they did not for me.
I like the exeution, and I cant blame the author for not followng my personal likes and dislikes.
It was deffently dark enough for me. It had small drops of emotional moments that did make you feel connected even tho i disliked the caracthers. I mean when Heathcliff visit the grave after she died. Why was I feeling all emotional?
So yes it was a mix, not the best but it was quite good.
3.75/5

I listened to an audiobook version.

For some reason I imagined that this book would be more interesting, that it would contain some great tragedy, blazing fits of the extremes of toxic love, that it would be an intense and heavy experience.

A while back I tried to read it and the first chapters would contain a lot of description, as I listened to it now it contained a lot more narrative and wasn't like the start at all. I thought it would be more difficult, but I ended up thinking that the whole drama and conflict was too simple. Some accents were a pain, but that's as far as the difficulty went for me.

For the length of the book I wanted so much more. I wanted fuller, more mature characters, not children engaging in conflicts. The amount of disturbing stuff that happened is minimal and I thought that stuff would be at least a little paranormal with the dream at the start, with so many mentions of the devil, but it wasn't. A lot of conflict in this book is due to the fact that its characters are not smart.

I expected the narrative to be rich and deep with psychological insight, but this was no Flaubert, I found no such a thing, it was very simple which has happened. It was so boring and plain and I feel bad for having this opinion because I had such expectations. There were so many events yet no proper reflection on them, no proper comment on them from the author and the main narrator would sometimes give her christian insights which I could not care for.

I was once again rendered abed though an acute malady of the nervous system. In my infirmity I took to my books and put to rest once and for all the matter of Wuthering Heights. A singular tale of depression and wholly wanting of levity. It much engaged me.

1.5/5

i just want to know who called this a romance book? or that this the “greatest” romance book ever? from the characters to the storyline to the ending, it all fell flat for me. I hated every single character. I have to applaud bronte for writing such horrendous characters ngl

“Wuthering Heights” is one of my favourite novels and rekindled my love of classics after spending a long time reading crappy YA books. I thought at first this novel was just the greatest novel of the Bronte sisters, but upon re-reading it, it may be one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.  The sheer passion that comes out of Wuthering Heights makes it one of the most outwardly passionate Victorian novels and you can really see Emily's poetry in her writing but also in her ability to create these wonderfully troubled and dynamic characters- only Emily Bronte can make you actually like and feel sympathy for a man like Heathcliff. Although, upon re-read I found myself rooting and pining for Hareton the most.

 The main critics towards this book are that it is melodramatic. Though I do admit it seems like a Victorian reality show with the outbursts, crying and emotional distress that makes characters instantly fall ill, this melodrama emotionally guides the reader; Just like the weather in Wuthering Heights, the turbulent storms are balanced with bitter winds and kind skies. The second criticism is that it is a difficult read and hard to understand and although, yes, if English is your second language and etc. the language itself may be difficult but I find that in most cases if a book is looked at as a difficult hurdle that is only read to be ticked off a list, it is likely to seem treacherous and laborious. What books like Wuthering Heights need is patience, but I promise, once you get into the rhythm of the novel it will be passing by incredibly fast-paced, for it is a very exciting and drama-packed book. At times when I found scenes difficult I also recommend this particular audiobook which can be found on youtube; it is a dramatic reading of the novel on this channel called ‘The Greatest Literature'.

Some moments from this reading of the novel that really stood out to me are:
- The dream sequence at the start of the novel from Mr Lockwood may be one of the best gothic passages I have ever read.
- I've always wondered why Bronte choose Nelly, a meek and morally uptight maid, to be the one to narrate a novel primarily about destructive love and passion in the intimate relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine until moments in the novel made it clear why Emily Bronte choose this. The frame narrative allows for some deeply tense and greatly irritating moments of miscommunication such as when Catherine declares her love for Heathcliff just as Heathcliff leaves after hearing her insult him.  
- As mentioned earlier on this earlier I found myself sympathizing the most with Hareton who was probably my favourite character (when usually it would be Heathcliff)

je me suis ennuyé tout le long malheureusement

Do people legitimately like heathcliff??? From minute one to minute done, he was a scornful sullen little piece of human garbage, and a fantastic villain, but im baffled the words “romantic” or “hero” ever got attached to him. 

4 stars
i'm just gonna say i didn't understand the beginning nor the end, but everything else was amazing

The story was not what I thought it was. It gets the behaviour of people soo well that its scary how far people might go.

Forward and back in time, sometimes difficult to tell “when” you were. Also, the names made it difficult to follow and keep track at times. OK story... but not “captivating”.

I went into this book knowing that it is not a love story, that people either love it or hate it, and that the characters would all be despicable.

I hated it. It was not in the slightest a pleasurable reading experience and it felt like such a drudgery to keep turning pages.

The story did not draw me in and I did not like the writing style at all (not for a lack of appreciation for classics, because I am very much enjoying reading classics now as an adult; but I truly cannot understand why the people who love this book praise its writing style so much).

Every character is unlikeable, which I expected, but I also felt that the characters lacked depth and that their mental illnesses, evils, and overall character ???arcs??? were ill portrayed.

As for the descriptions of the moors, which seem to be an aspect of the book that some readers find especially awe-inspiring, ???I could never see anything extraordinary in them.???

I shan???t be recommending it to anyone else.

Haunting

It truly is tragic.

Watching a bunch of fading landed gentry behaving badly has a kind of vicious Real Housewives feel to it which could be fun at times. These people could not bear to let anyone else be happy and were constantly cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

However, it's kind of blunted a bit by the distance the literary device used to tell gives it (some parts are like Lockwood relating a letter written by Cathy as narrated to him by Ellen) and the ending sort of runs out of steam.

This is the story of how Catherine Earnshaw ended up being Catherine Earnshaw.
This is a story of two men, of one who took everything the other valued, one by one.
This is a story of romance in two generations that are strangely mirror images, only slightly different.

For those who are looking for a light-hearted novel with fun and charm, stay away. This is far from it.
And you understand the relations only by Chapter 9. It's confusing; I think figuring that out is what made me stick to the book in the beginning. (Things don't get “pretty” until Heathcliff grows up.)
Many books have characters we grow to love, respect. Many books (unfortunately) have characters we couldn't care less about. Only a few books have characters, we develop a passionate loathing towards.
Every significant character in this book is AWFUL. Every single character we either hate or feel sorry for. The reading experience is like sitting wrapped in a wet blanket on a cloudy day. Everybody dies. It's gloomy, it's sad. Nothing good EVER happens.
Yet I enjoyed reading this book, being a passive observer, like Mr. Lockwood, of this queer couple families that by the end got mangled up into one.

Whatever happened in this book seems unlikely at first. But imagine having just one neighboring house 4 miles away, for your entire life, in an era of digital sophistication where, “call” means visit. With no external stimuli, literally a closed environment with semi-incestuous relationships, no wonder everyone was either psychotic or neurotic or dying probably of some disease.

It's amazing how everyone made everyone else miserable and themselves ended up being miserable.
Read this book for the sake of reading it. It's food for thought.

I kept hearing the eponymous song from Kate Bush but knew nothing about this book, so I wanted to give it a try. I couldn't imagine the depth of this story, the cruelty and lengths people could go to for love and revenge. I was really mesmerized by the story from the beginning to the end and couldn't let go of this book. And even if I hated Heatcliff with all my soul, I couldn't refrain myself from loving the poetry of this ending. A great and unique book!

i am finally free of this book ! just kidding, but not really. a lot of time id no idea what was going on, but i'll try to analyse. what i got is that young heathcliff and catherine were girlbosses, and fuck everyone else. i think what they had was true love and they deserved to be together. i think after cathy (earnshaw/linton?) died, heathcliff became overcome with grief and later on, greed. i think he used his son to his advantage, encouraging him to marry catherine (heathcliff) for the inheritance. i really did like linton though, i thought he was such a sweet kid. and the way catherine described him was really lovely, too. i'm just gonna flat out say that i hated catherine heathcliff. she was this little pretentious brat who cried every time she didn't get her own way. i didn't like hareton at first, but he ended up becoming one of my favourites. catherine treated him like a literal science experiment, and she was so bipolar with with him. one moment she'd be like “ew don't touch me you're dirty asf” and the next she was like “i wanna be friends lol” like ??? it was weird, and i think hareton was treated badly because he liked catherine so much that he just gave into all of it. also the theme of death is so present in this fucking story LOL. you just kinda get used to all of the characters dying. at some points, i didn't even know WHO was dying, just that someone was gone. my favourite quote is probably, “it would degrade me to marry heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how i love him; and that, not because he's handsome, nelly, but because he's more myself than i am. whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” it's such a beautiful love confession and i just think that those two were made for each other.

No rating as I listened to a 4 hour abridged version, so I feel like I didn't give it a fair shake.

Some great writing, but past the first quarter I didn't find the story captivating. Might come back and read the full version at some point.

Listening to this as an audiobook was a VERY BAD IDEA. The orator doing the different voices for Heathcliff and Linton and UGH Joseph was just insufferable. Also it was like 12 hours long. I won't lie, by the end I picked it up to 1.75x speed and had to read some SparkNotes for the parts where I got distracted.

I had just finished watching Bridgerton and thirsted for more early 19th century romance and scandal. Alas, Wuthering Heights is not quite that. It's far more gothic and disturbing. And the fact that most of the book is told second-hand through the housekeeper Nellie, while an interesting literary device that leads to an equally interesting conclusion when the narration transitions into real-time, left me feeling unsatisfied. Like, cmon, she really remembered all of those details years and years later, and had the stamina to repeat them? I guess storytelling was the form of entertainment back then, so flourish would be common; so the natural conclusion then is that little of this is to be believed. Unreliable narrator and whatnot.

Maybe I'll revisit this in print sometime later, but I think I prefer the other Brontë sister.