This book has been hard for me to read. I don't know what it is about British novelists—from Dickens to Rowling childhood is always about torment, abuse, and innocence violated.

On the other hand Bronte was a gifted novelist with a solid grounding in classical drama. That Heathcliffe is such a godawful pr*ck is tragedy—for him and everybody who comes in contact with him. That he and the other characters cannot escape their fate is as old as dramatic writing.

There are plenty of other elements to this book that make it intriguing despite its fierce and unyielding vision. Bronte's understanding of her characters' psychology is breathtaking considering that she was only in her mid-20s when she wrote it and had spent most of her life in an isolated household. Anyone with an ounce of feminism can see how the unequal legal status of the characters plays into the tragedy. The men control the action but in a destructive manner that the dutiful women live with and try to mitigate whenever possible. Knowing the tragic lives of the Bronte sisters gives the story an overwhelming brooding and sinister aura. Glimpses of Bronte's family keep popping into the narrative, from her description of the dreary landscape to the whiny, doomed cousin so like her own brother.

I would recommend reading this book if you haven't been required to in some English class somewhere but beware that despite its happy-face ending it is about the extreme dark side of human nature.