WEATHERING THE STORM BY KATE FORRESTER - GIVEAWAY WINNERS

The latest giveaway contests here at FLY HIGH have been somehow connected to Wuthering Heights, the controversial passionate tale Emily Bronte published in 1847. You can still enter for a chance to win a digital copy of Wuthering Nights by Summer Day (click HERE), which is a modern retelling of Catherine and Heathcliff's tale, while I'm here to reveal the names of the two winners of a paperback copy of Weathering The Storm by Kate Forrester, which is actually inspired to the TV series Sparkhouse, loosely based on Wuthering Heights. 

There has been a lively exchange of comments after Kate Forrester's interview and I must thank all contributors,  starting from Kate herself!

Now it's time to reveal the names of the two winners picked up via random.org:

Mrs Higgins & Herba

Congratulations to both and thanks for taking part!

KATE FORRESTER , WEATHERING THE STORM AND CONTINUING THE STORY OF SPARKHOUSE. INTERVIEW + GIVEAWAY

Some of you may know her as Khandy and have already appreciated her talent as a story-teller . Kate Forrester is here at FLY HIGH to answer my questions about her first published novel, Weathering The Storm. Read my interview and get a chance to win a copy of the book. There are two copies for two winners! This giveaway is open worldwide and ends on 18 June. 

Weathering The Storm is your first published novel. How difficult was your journey to publication and how gratifying was it when you got your paperback author copies from the publisher?

Trying to get your novel published is not for the faint hearted. I must have sent Weathering... to about twenty agents. My skin has become so thick that, if it wasn’t for the moisturiser, I’d look like a toad. Eventually after numerous rejections, I decided to self publish through Amazon. I was amazed how simple it was. As for it being gratifying, it was amazing. I had three firsts – the first copy being sold on Kindle, the first review on Amazon and then the first novel being sold. I was like a child on Christmas Day unwrapping my presents.

SPARKHOUSE - RA FRIDAY AND ALL ABOUT THE BRONTES CHALLENGE IN ONE POST

‘Oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

What I’ve been re-watching for the All About the Brontes Challenge is the modern-day version of Wuthering Heights , or better the 2002 BBC series thus presented. Emily Bronte ’s evergreen romance has inspired many TV and film adaptations, including Robert Fuest's 1970 film starring Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy. In 1992 Pewter Kosminsky revisited the story with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes in the lead roles and the latest version is quite recent, 2009 . I posted about the several adaptions I’ve seen so far in A WUTHERING WEEKEND .

In this loosely –based- on modern version Heathcliff is a young working -class woman called Carol Bolton, who is in love with her middle class neighbour, Andrew. So the class relationship between Bronte's uncultured Heathcliff and the upper class Cathy has been reversed. And it is middle-class Andrew's parents who want him to leave Cathy and go to university.

The three-part TV drama is   SPARKHOUSE (2003) ,  filmed in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, northern England - not far from Haworth, where Emily Bronte grew up. Producer Derek Wax believed the story's themes are perennial: "The battle between passionate love and economic necessity; following your heart, or doing something expedient, or socially desirable. These questions are the same in the 21st century as they were in the 19th."

 

The storyline

• Carol Bolton is a feisty, passionate and reckless young woman who life has dealt a raw deal. She lives in poverty-stricken Sparkhouse Farm with a drunken and abusive father, Richard. Carol is determined to protect those closest to her - younger sister Lisa and her soul mate since childhood, Andrew Lawton.

(Carol and Andrew reading Wuthering Heights on the moors)

• Andrew and Carol's love is not a teenage crush. Their passion is urgent, powerful, enormous, like the landscape they share; the raw energy of the wind, the awesome loneliness of the moors. Yet all of this is in danger of being destroyed when a Pandora's Box of secrets and lies is forced open. Andrew's parents are strongly against the match and ensure that he goes away to college. Andrew is frightened by what he discovers about Carol and leaves...

• After another violent attack of her father against her, Carol runs away from home with her younger sister, Lisa,  in order to protect the latter from their father's violence.

• (After three years) Andrew has tried to forget his passion for Carol and is back to his family home married to a sweet young woman he met at university . (Parallelism with Wuthering Heights  : Catherine’s marriage to Linton)

• Carol too is back : her father's farmhand John Standring, has searched and found her in order to inform that her father is seriously ill , Carol’s rage and disappointment are unrestrainable (Heathcliff's furious reaction to Cathy's marriage)

• After the death of her father and since Andrew has also had a baby from the woman he married, Carol seeks solace with her father's farmhand, tender and caring John Standring, and works with him to protect her family (Lisa) and the farm. (Heathcliff ‘s marriage to Isabella Linton)

• But the bonds which have always linked Andrew and Carol cannot be easily cut ... as it happens in Wuthering Heights between Catherine and Heathcliff, their love will survive tragedy and even death.

(Andrew reading Wuthering Heights to his pupils)

 I loved and still love this series a lot, though  at first I was a bit disappointed because I couldn't  find as much Wuthering Heights as I expected buying the DVD in 2006.  This modern-day retelling of Wuthering Heights is a gripping  compelling story, with memorable characters and a complex plot.  Heathcliff/Carol Bolton, the daughter of an abusive, alcoholic father who molests her,  is incredibly well portrayed by Sarah Smart ( who had been Cathy Jr in 1999 version of Wuthering Heights).  Andrew and Carol, Cathy and Heathcliff , are torn apart by the upper class family of the boy and this will condemn them to unhappiness.  The subplots and supporting characters are all very contemporary with contemporary conflicts and passions. Some  viewers  may be confused by the gender-switch in the story  or disturbed by the bluntness of some scenes and dialogues. But I'm convinced , instead, that Sparkhouse  is worth seeing .

The Cast

• Carol Bolton - Sarah Smart

• Richard Bolton - Alun Armstrong
• Lisa Bolton - Abigail James
• Andrew Lawton - Joseph McFadden
• John Standring - Richard Armitage
• Kate Lawton - Celia Imrie
• Paul Lawton - Nicholas Farrell

About me and  John Standring

You've seen Richard Armitage in the pictures above as John Standring (the Isabella Linton of this story) , one of his most  touching interpretations. I must confess I didn't notice him the first time I saw this series, 'cause my attention was focused on the main hero that is  Andrew /Joe MacFadden and ... well... John  was a very sweet lovely guy but we didn't hit it off at the time! Then, when I saw Richard as John Thornton in North and South in 2008 for the first time, I came to "notice" him  and started searching for information about that unknown (then!) Mr Armitage.  I discovered he had worked in Sparkhouse but I couldn't recall him. I neither recognized him immediately when I played Sparkhouse again in search for broody Thornton! Now I would catch the glimpse of RA even with a mask on his handsome face, I bet. And I'd recognize his voice among thousands. So ... it was not love at first sight, you see! Now, I must admit, John Standring is one of my favorite among Richard's characters.

I want to leave you with three final caps....

Picture 1. Lisa Bolton (Carol's younger sister in Sparkhouse)  and John Standring (Carol's husband in the same series) - (2003)

Pictures 2 and 3

Guy  and Meg in Robin Hood 3 (2009)

Lovely couple, aren't they?

A WUTHERING WEEKEND

Emily Bronte was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England. She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry. It was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called one of the most repellent book ever published. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and instead of a proper Victorian heroine she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film/ TV adaptations. WUTHERING HEIGHTS. (from Masterpiece Classic presentation)

I’ve re-watched all the film/TV adaptations I’ve got in my DVD collection in order to compare and decide which one I liked best.

1. Wuthering Heights film 1992 starring Juliette Binoche (Catherine Earnshaw), Ralph Fiennes (Heathcliff)  with Jeremy Northam (Hindley Earnshaw)

2. Wuthering Heights Tv movie 1998 starring Orla Brady and  Robert Cavanagh with Matthew MacFadyen and Sarah Smart

3. Masterpiece Classic 2009 two-part series WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Andrew Lincoln

4. SPARKHOUSE, Sally Wainwright ‘s BBC drama (2003), inspired to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights  starring Sarah Smart, Joe McFadden and Richard Armitage

It has been a real marathon, full of passion and fury, tragedy and romance. This is one of the stories I’ve loved reading the most and which most move me to tears each time.
I first thought I could have used this post as one of the entries for my PERIOD DRAMA CHALLENGE  in the section VICTORIAN MIST but then I decided this story is absolutely non-Victorian, in spite of the date of its publication. It is Romantic in its mood; it has  a Byronic hero as its male protagonist and  a totally atypical female protagonist, too wild and passionate, too free and self-determined to embody the Victorian "angel of the hearth". Wuthering Heights is terribly modern in its originality. Impossible to label it  in a definite genre. What I am sure of  is that it is not Victorian.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 1992

The most grey and bleak of the three adaptations I saw. Quite accurately based on the original text, it starts with a female figure wandering on the moors and revisiting the story she has heard about and decided to write: Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s tragic love story. It’s the first WUTHERING HEIGHTS I saw and the one I’m more affectionate to. Some details are given for granted but those who well know the story don’t need them to catch the dramaticity and beauty of these beloved characters and of their doomed lives. Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are absolutely convincing.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS TV movie 1998

Not so different in its structure from the 1992 film, some scenes are pretty similar. Still very near to the original text. Not exceptionally good. I don’t particularly like the two actors starring as the two unfortunate lovers. It has received much interest later on, after Pride and Prejudice 2005 was released, when a huge number of new Darcy’s fans started looking for more Matthew Macfadyen’s work. He is, in fact, in this movie as handsome Hareton, Hindley Earnshaw ’s son.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS- Masterpiece Classic 2009

Of course the script writers had to adapt this story for modern American and European modern  audience and they changed a good deal of details though substantially the plot is the one we very well know. I appreciated the effort to popularize such a classic novel but I must admit I don’t think it was so necessary to add violence to already violent characters like Heathcliff or Hindley and neither to show what happened in a "marital bed" (Shakespeare?) at night in those years, too. I loved the costumes and the locations of this Masterpiece Classic version.  (CLICK to see a BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO)

SPARKHOUSE 2003

Just "inspired" to Wuthering Heights, SPARKHOUSE tells the story of contemporary teenagers. Carol lives at run-down Sparkhouse Farm with her drunken, abusive father, Richard (Alun Armstrong), and younger sister, Lisa. Across the valley live the middle-class Lawtons - Andrew, and his parents Paul and Kate. Carol and Andrew have been inseparable since childhood. At the beginning of the drama, they are 18 and passionately in love, a love that is raw, urgent and powerful. Carol is feisty and reckless, a young woman who is mistrusted and disliked by Andrew's parents who try to keep them apart. The only place they can be together is a ruined farmhouse up on the moors.

John Standring (Richard Armitage) works at Sparkhouse Farm. Loyal, hard-working, and painfully shy, he loves Carol. At first only a peripheral character, he gradually moves towards the centre of the drama.
The story covers approximately 5 years, and follows Carol and Andrew's attempts to be together in spite of numerous obstacles.

Just a curiosity, Sarah Smart interpreted Catherine Linton in Wuthering Heights 1998 and in Sparkhouse is, instead, the female protagonist, Heathcliff 's counterpart in this modern drama.

(Sarah as Cathy Jr in 1998)

(Sarah as Carol in 2003)

UNFORGETTABLE QUOTES (from 1998 adaptation) AND SCENES (from 1992 film)

1. Catherine is talking about her intention to accept Edgar Linton's marriage proposal to Nellie, her old faithful maid servant:

“If Heathcliff and I married we should be beggars. Whereas if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise and place him out of my brother’s power.”

“That’s a terrible reason for marrying Linton”


“It’s the best reason. I do love Edgar. But my love for him is like …is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it. But my love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rocks beneath. Nellie, I am Heathcliff. He is always, always in my mind. Not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

2. Catherine is dying and asks Heathcliff forgiveness for marrying Linton . He answers:


“I forgive what you’ve done to me. I love my murderer. But yours…How can I?”

3. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff is desperate and shouts:

“I pray one prayer. I repeat till my toungue stiffens. Catherine Earnshaw may you not rest as long as I am living. Haunt me! Take any form, drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul”.

YES !!! I KNOW IT IS TERRIBLY SAD. BUT I LOVE CRYING ON THESE EXTREMELY MOVING PASSIONATE SCENES. AM I THE ONLY ONE?

P.S. I have - but did not want to re-watch - an Italian  adaptation of Wuthering Heights (RAI 2004).

Can you imagine why? Too many changes, too many cuts. It's a total re-invention of the story as it happened with the latest Italian DAVID COPPERFIELD. Fortunately, I can watch movies and drama coming from Britain. They still seem to respect their classics. What about the new EMMA? Have you seen the first episode?