Heathcliff's Tale - Hardcover

Tennant, Emma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1872621910 ISBN 13: 9781872621913

Publisher: The Tartarus Press, 2005

Synopsis

fiction

About this title

Review

'As an imaginative response to Wuthering Heights her beautifully crafted tale is wonderfully engaged and engaging.' -- Lucasta Miller - Times Literary Supplement

Synopsis

Emma Tennant's new novel, Heathcliff's Tale, brings together a chilling ghost story, a literary mystery, and a satire of Bronte academic studies. It is the story of the haunting of Henry Newby, a hapless young lawyer despatched to Haworth Parsonage shortly after the death of Emily Bronte to retrieve a novel by Ellis Bell for his uncle, publisher of Wuthering Heights. He soon finds himself adrift in a sea of possibilities: are the pages which burn on the study fire the work of fiction which his uncle awaits, or, as he believes, do they comprise the confessions of a wicked man, a murderer who has brought destruction and misery to all he meets? Who is this Heathcliff who spills his black soul among the flames and ashes? Fact and fiction are intertwined as we are confronted with the enigma of Emily Bronte. How could a young woman with no apparent experience of passion or knowledge of evil, have summoned up Heathcliff? Can evil be passed from one generation to the next? Or is it born out of deprivation and despair? Does it linger, long after the death of the evil-doer - and can it haunt chillingly through the pages of a book? Heathcliff's Tale is grippingly atmospheric and a rattling good read, and should appeal to the general reader, literary aficionado and ghost story enthusiast alike.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Tartarus Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1872621910
• ISBN 13: 9781872621913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 213