homeThe Book Chat question this week: What are your favourite romance novels? To be completely honest, I have never read a book from the romance genre. As a fan of literary fiction, I have a hard time enjoying books that are genre specific (not that I never do, it's just rare for me to come across one that I love). Sadly, I don't have a "romance novel" to share with everyone, but there is a love story that will always be a personal favourite.
I absolutely adore Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. This novel is completely different from my other favourite books, but it is one of (if not the) very best on my shelf. It's not necessarily a romance novel, but it has a great love story, one that is very realistic and intense (not anything like a happily ever after). There's also a pleasant number of ghosts in Wuthering Heights, which I am totally okay with.
The first time I read Wuthering Heights was in my senior year of high school. I hated it. Until my teacher gave us a "lecture" about it (it was an advanced lit class and he was prepping us for University) and my mind was opened up to the intricacies of the text. Teach a kid literary criticism and they will never think of anything the same again. He explained the circular narration and the use of liminal spaces so well that my final comment that day was, "I want to go home and read this book again." I didn't, at the advice of my teacher. He told me wait three years until I tried again.
So I did. Not necessarily by choice, but being an English major completely restricts your reading list. Three years later, Wuthering Heights was assigned reading for one of my courses and I fell in love. (The teacher who told me to wait before I read it again then asked me to talk to his current students about the novel when I was a student teacher at my old high school. I suspect they were disliking it as much as I did the first time around.)
There you have it, my tumultuous relationship with Wuthering Heights. Which also mirrors my tumultuous feelings for Heathcliff and Catherine. Funny how life imitates art and all that jazz.
So I did. Not necessarily by choice, but being an English major completely restricts your reading list. Three years later, Wuthering Heights was assigned reading for one of my courses and I fell in love. (The teacher who told me to wait before I read it again then asked me to talk to his current students about the novel when I was a student teacher at my old high school. I suspect they were disliking it as much as I did the first time around.)
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| Image credit: Lizzy Stewart (Flickr) |
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