Catherine by April Lindner
My rating: 3/5 cats
sadly, i did not hate this book as much as i wanted to. this is the same thing that happened to me with Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight (but not New Moon or Eclipse, those were pretty bad); i thought those books were all going to be worse than they actually were, and i was hoping they would inspire gleefully sinister reviews where i would get to vent some of this spleen i got rattling around inside of me. but they weren’t as bad as i had expected, and i found myself grudgingly appreciating certain qualities that others may have dismissed out of hand. so, it is all a matter of perspective. you may read this book and think “this is terrible,” but because my expectations were rock-bottom low, i was able, with my incredibly good-natured ability to appreciate all of life’s rosy pleasures, to enjoy parts of it, against all intentions.
but that is not me saying this is a great book.
let’s get the bad out of the way first, because it is so much more fun to mock than to applaud.
and let me interrupt myself to say that if you don’t already know this, i am a huge fan of Wuthering Heights. but i am by no means a wh purist, otherwise i would never have read Windward Heights, which changes the setting from the wild moors to the wild caribbean. nor would i have read Wuthering Bites which is, of course, a vampire adaptation. i appreciate creativity, playfulness, the manipulation of source material i already love in order to produce something a little off-kilter. having said that, i am usually disappointed, as the star-ratings on my “smotherings” shelf will attest. but i keep reading them. even if i will never love a tweaked text as much as the original, it pleases the completist in me to see what else can be done with my beloved wuthers.
okay. so, here we have a Wuthering Heights spin-off that is set in the underground music scene of new york city.
and heathcliff is named hence.
and therein lies the reason i thought this book would be the worst thing ever. hence?????
“I’m Catherine.” And when he didn’t reply, I said, “You have a name, right?”
“Hence.”
It took me a while to wrap my mind around that one. “Hans?”
His answer came through gritted teeth, like he’d been asked that question a thousand times. “Hence. Like therefore.”
oh, dear.
i may not be a purist, but that’s just sillypants. i also was cross when The Heights re-named him “henry”, but kept everyone else’s name the same. but at least “henry” is a name, for goodness’ sake. here, the only name that stays the same is catherine. for whatever reason.
and unlike w.h., instead of heathcliff and cathy growing up like little savages together on the moors and forming an unshakeable bond that carries over into their adult lives and afterlives, here we have hence and catherine spending a couple of months together while he crashes at her dad’s nightclub and works for him. their passion lacks the depth and intensity of the original; they are just a couple of average horny teens from different socioeconomic backgrounds and one’s got a racist brother. i don’t see kate bush writing a song about these two kids.
my only other big gripe is probably way nitpicky, but to me it is a big deal because it is such a clumsy attempt to preserve something from the original, and the blocking is just so off, it ends up coming across as silly(pants).
and it’s the way catherine’s big scene plays out. you know, the one where she says that thing that heathcliff overhears but doesn’t stick around for the postscript and so misinterprets catherine’s intentions and goes off god knows where for three years.
in this book that scene is played out, not with dear befuddled nelly the housekeeper, but with catherine’s best friend jackie. i have no objection to that. catherine’s dilemma in this book is not a choice between two guys, but between staying in new york with hence and his band, and going to harvard. (the school, this is not another stupid human-name). i have no problem with that, although changing the central conflict in this adaptation changes not only the plot, but also how the reader responds to catherine herself. which is, of course, a huge part of wuthering heights – how both catherine and heathcliff are completely awful and selfish people, but here they are just young likeable lovers overcoming typical teen problems. but so, fine, different confidante, different obstacle, different feelings towards our protag. but here’s the thing, instead of having this confession take place inside, with “heathcliff” lying down on a bench or whatever, out of sight but still able to hear, their conversation is outdoors, on jackie’s front stoop.
“…you’re afraid to tell him a simple thing like where you’re going to college. It shouldn’t be like that. He should be as supportive of your dreams as you are of his. Is he?”
“No,” I admitted, my voice sullen.
“Then maybe you should break up with him.”
“You’re right.” The sunlight was suddenly too bright for my eyes. I bent to rest my forehead on my knees, thinking about all the Jackie had said. As silence fell between us again, I heard sounds of a scuffle, sneakers slapping against concrete, car brakes screeching, a driver cursing out his window.
I straightened up and saw the surprise in Jackie’s eyes. “I am?” she asked, sounding so amazed that I couldn’t help laughing.
“You’re right that I shouldn’t be afraid of Hence. I should be able to talk to him.”
“Oh.” Jackie sounded disappointed, as if she’d actually thought I might be considering breaking up with Hence.
so, guess what happened there? oh no, hence overheard what catherine said, but left before he heard what she actually meant! oh noes! but, wait… where was he when he overheard this? on the sidewalk? close enough to hear, but not close enough for them to see him?? and how fast is he that he ran away so that all those noises were distant enough for them to not realize what was going on?
oh, but here’s the best part. because eventually, they do realize:
“Right after you were talking about how I should break up with Hence and I said you were right, did you notice something out in the street? Some kind of commotion?”
The look on Jackie’s face told me she knew exactly what I was asking. “Oh no. Oh, Cath. You don’t think…?”
“He skipped out on a recording session without calling in sick or anything, and he wasn’t at the apartment.”
“Where else could he be?”
“First answer me.” I grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed my forehead to hers. “Think hard. What was it we heard?”
“I didn’t look up. We were so busy talking. But I did hear something… maybe someone running down the street. A car slamming on its brakes, and some yelling.”
“What if it was Hence running away from us. Could it have been?”
Jackie winced, and I released her shoulders, realizing how hard I’d been squeezing them. “It could have been,” she said. “Oh, Cathy, I hope it wasn’t.”
this takes place in new york, where tires squealing and shouting and all of that are such regular occurrences that it becomes total white noise. so for them to remember those noises at all, and to then jump to such a bizarre (but accurate) conclusion is bananas.
okay, that’s my thumbs-down.
the thumbs-up? well, i did like that this took some of the spirit of wh without staying too faithful to the plot. it was able to become its own story, not so much with the catherine/hence bits, but with the story of chelsea, catherine’s daughter, coming to new york years later after finding a letter from her mother that seems to suggest she did not die, as she had been told, but had instead mysteriously vanished. so she ends up going on this journey to get to the bottom of the mystery and meeting now grown-up hence and learning all the seeeecrets of her mother’s great love.
and there are some interesting twists.
best retelling ever? nah, but a pretty good story that kept me entertained last week when i was dying of the flu-plague.
final word?
not a trainwreck after all!
is a glowing final word.
