Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...
 Stunning November 14, 2008
I've just read this book for the third time, and it's certainly one of those rare finds that gets better and better with every read. Dark, brooding and passionate, Emily Bronte shows great talent as writer and demonstrates a great understanding and a great flair for the Gothic genre. Despite the unlikeable characters, the reader is sucked into their all-encompassing world of gloom, love, madness, despair and revenge. Heathcliff is certainly the greatest anti-hero created. I only wish EB's last manuscript had not been destroyed, unpublished, after her death - know knows what master-piece she would have created?
 Misleading Advertising by Penguin! August 22, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I thought it was time to expand my reading horizons with some classic literature without blowing my budget, so this Penguin Popular Classic at 2 seemed the ideal choice, particularly as, when I used the 'Search Inside' facility, it showed in the list of contents a preface, chronology, introduction and further reading.
When I received the book, these 42 pages were missing, and on closer inspection I see the 'Search Inside' facility shows a completely different, more expensive Penguin edition.
This seems highly misleading to me - it's disappointing that a publisher with the status of Penguin would mislead customers like this.
5 stars for the story, reduced to 3 for cheating!!
The height of great literature June 22, 2008
I've lost count of the number of times I've read this; but every time something else jumps out at me. There is something so different and hard to pin down - indefinable - about what exactly it is that makes this book so unique.
Heathcliffe and the first Catherine are almost demented in their wild passions - almost as if Emily Bronte were taking the idea of romance and passion to in insane extreme - and one of the strongest themes in the book is whether the lovers meet again after death. It seems incredible that at the two houses no one seems to shop, either for clothes or food - there is little interest in normal human bodily life or functions. A Bronte scholar, Thomas Moser, believed that Emile Bronte wrote the final famous sentence to the book without irony. "...wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth". But to me, the whole book hinges around the concept of the possibility of fanatic love overcoming death, though perhaps not to the benefit of the lovers. Far better to attain the rational, human life experience - that of Hareton and the second Catherine.
A heartbreaking love story! May 26, 2008
One of the great love stories and a brilliantly written book. It deserves it reputation as there has never been a love story quite like the one between Cathy and Heathcliffe.
Dont make prejudgements April 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a fantastic novel. I am trying to read some "classics" at the moment instead of my usual diet of Stephen King etc and this is the first one I have read that I have enjoyed from start to finish.
I think everyone will take different conclusions from this book, some will side with Heathcliff and Catherine, and some will feel sympathy for the wreckage they leave behind in their determination to be together.
The setting and the relationships between characters and the wild surroundings of the moor are also richly portrayed.
Highly recommended and no boring tale of Victorian morals at all.
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