The Perils of Reading Bronte:

1. Other books really cower in the shadow of it. I haven’t found a book as captivating as this since finishing it yesterday.

2. Unlike Pride & Prejudice, which fills women with an unrealistic hope of the existence of “gentlemen”, this just crushes you, the reader, with the heavy truth that sometimes even the most perfect of loves is doomed. DOOMED.

3. The book itself is frustrating as hell: The actual story of Catherine and Heathcliff is teasingly short and we are left with the remnants of their offspring, barely a notch on their parents’ belt (in dislikeability as well as strength of character).

4. While reading Wuthering Heights, you, the reader, will become so absorbed in the smokey, romantic scenery of the moors, that upon finishing, you will return to reality to find it bland and harsh in comparison.

5. It inspires one to write, while dangling in front of them the essence of perfect writing – unattainable in all its glory.

6. Once completed, the experience of reading it for the first time is lost forever.

7. It makes the most stoic of us cry (not that I’m stoic by any means but you get the idea). People I know to be non-criers have cried from this. And when reading in public, it’s a terrible cause for embarrassment.

8. It’s a terribly depressing book. I love a good downer as much as the next person of melancholy humour, but not even P.G. Wodehouse could get me out of this funk. I growled at anybody who came near me while I had this book in my hand, and for the rest of the day afterwards.

9. I HATE Catherine. So much so that I sometimes forget that she is a character, not a real person. This is hardly the type of emotion one should walk around carrying inside them.

Thus ends my list of perils.

Rather than round it up to an even ten, I’m going to leave it at that. This definitely goes up on my pedestal of life-changing books, for all its perfect phrases and infuriating characters, and is currently headbutting against Jane Eyre for my favourite Bronte book. I’ll let you know the result after this round.

A few more tidbits…

I cannot possibly begin to review Wuthering Heights purely because I would not do it justice. The book deserves one of those literary criticisms usually written by Honours or PhD students.

I was warned by the friend who lent it to me that its exquisite literary fineness causes many other books to shrink in comparison. I laughed, maintaining that my mind isn’t usually changed that easily.

I finished the book in about 7 hours, and managed to cook dinner with one hand while my nose was still buried in the pages.