LynneC’s review of The Return of the Stranger by Kate Walker
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents 1 Oct 11
Kate Walker’s book is a re-envisioning of Wuthering Heights. It is a roaring success in some ways, a failure in others, and a lot depends on how you want to look at it.
Wuthering Heights (which my spellcheck keeps wanting to correct to “Withering Heights”) is a classic novel about the elemental forces of nature. What it isn’t, as Kate Walker says in her introduction, is a love story. It’s the story centered around two people who can’t help themselves and in many ways never grow up. Cathy and Heathcliff are, IMO, deeply dislikeable characters who nevertheless fascinate. They don’t think, they don’t reason, they just are, particularly when they’re together. Cathy isn’t just wilful, she’s so selfish she thinks nothing of endangering the health of her unborn child. Heathcliff is a force of nature, and not in a good way. He’s rude, selfish, heedless and at times deeply stupid. It’s the first and only novel by Emily Bronte, and it shows all the weaknesses and strengths of that. The plot is poorly constructed, the narrative voice awkward, probably deliberately so, and yet it is an outpouring of a deeply passionate nature. And it’s a long book. The first part of the book, the famous bit, is all Heathcliff and Cathy. The second is their offspring, and what happens to the next generation, but although the plot is interesting, the characters aren’t nearly as vivid.
Kate Walker is a writer of immense experience in writing the 50,000-word romance, particularly for the Mills and Boon Modern line (reprinted in the US as Harlequin Presents). She is also academically linked with the novels of the Brontes. But she is never anything but a professional, and in her retake on the classic, she’s trimmed the characters, rejigged the story and characters, and turned Emily Bronte’s astonishing debut into a satisfactory romance.
She has also trimmed the wildness and the insanity of the original. But how do you tame that and have something left?
In Walker’s version, Heath (cliff) has returned back to the family home for revenge. One of Walker’s themes is revenge, so this aspect of WH plays into her stories nicely. Kat (Cathy) is a widow, her husband, Arthur, dying after laying waste to the estate and his fortune in the time-honored gambling, women, and booze tradition. That’s a big difference from the original, where Edgar Linton loves and marries Cathy and cares for her until her death, despite Heathcliff’s intrusions. I always rather liked Edgar, despite his snobbery. But in Walker’s version, Edgar is made into a bad ‘un and has used and abused Cathy. His sister, who in the original book marries Heathcliff, here is Isobel, an airhead who is spending money the estate no longer has. While this unbalances the original, it does rebalance the story and give it some tropes that readers of Harlequin Presents will be more than familiar with.
By making Heath less wild, more civilized, and by ’emasculating’ Cathy, Kate Walker has turned the original story into a category romance. Of course, without the insanity and the madness it is “just another book,” but it would be hard to contain that within the covers of a 50,000-word category romance. It is a readable romance that fits well into the Modern line with recognizable characters and plot, which is more inspired by Wuthering Heights than anything else. Kat doesn’t have the inner strength of Cathy, nor the independent spirit. She is acted on rather than forcing events to happen, and she doesn’t have to face Cathy’s problem of being a strong woman in a man’s world. While she stands up to the problems landed on her by her now-dead husband, she doesn’t initiate any ideas of her own and is prepared to accept whatever the bank manager tells her, rather than fight. I can see the original Cathy faced with this situation, leaving the house, dropping the key through the letterbox and walking away without looking back.
There are some sly references to the original, such as Heath’s facial scar, given to him by Cathy’s brother, and the huge dog. There did seem to be a title error – although Cathy is a countess and her late husband an earl, his mother was a Mrs., unless he inherited from his uncle, which didn’t seem to be the case, that would have been impossible.
The only truly successful short version of the story is, in my opinion, Kate Bush’s wildly insane single. She gets the insanity and the nature aspect just right. This book tames the story, turns it into a mainstream romance, which is, after all, what Mills and Boon wanted her to do. But I’d love to see her let loose on the full book and given free rein to put the insanity back.
In fact, I’m quite tempted myself. But I’d go a completely different way.
Oh, and I’ve included the British cover, as well as the US one. Do I have to explain why? That is some serious male totty!
Grade: B
Summary:
Lady Katherine Charlton has never forgotten the stable hand with dangerous fists and a troubled heart from her childhood. Now the rebel is back, his powerful anger concealed under a polished and commanding veneer.When ten years of scandal and secrets are unleashed, with a passionate, furious kiss, Heath’s deepest, darkest wish crystallizes: revenge—and Kathy—will be his!
Read an excerpt.
The British cover got lost in translation, so here’s the Amazon page, if you want to see it. Nice, huh?
http://amzn.com/B005EWG7QK
ACK! My fault, Lynne, sorry. I had to move the pic, saved it, and then forgot about it! But I’ve rectified that error and your serious male totty is now included! Yum is all I have to say now!
Thanks for the review Lynne I’m happy that the book worked as a mainstream romance for you – which was, after all, what I was commissioned to do. To create a Modern/Presents romance inspired by the themes of Wuthering Heights. If that’s the way it worked for you then fine – but if by ’failure’ you mean I didn’t ‘let loose’ on the full book well – that wasn’t my remit and so I don’t see it as a failure because there was no way I was trying to recreate Emily Bronte’s astonishing novel. For one thing it’s not a love story but a story of power, passion and possession.
I think we’re going to have to disagree on our personal readings of the original book – Cathy was never for me a strong woman in a man’s world – she was childish, wilful, selfish – and she doesn’t have the capability to leave the house dropping the key through the letterbox etc – if she had she would have left with Heathcliff. My Kat is trying to work with her lawyers etc to save the livelihood of the workers on the estate. One of the reasons Cathy and Heathcliff separate is because she wants the comfort and status of the Linton family and Thrushcross Grange. She grabs at this as soon as she can after Heathcliff has gone- in fact has already decided to accept Edgar’s proposal before then – marrying very young – she is after all, only 18 when she dies. Other points we’ll have to agree to disagree on – Edgar. I’ve never seen Edgar as a sweet, lovable, caring man who was going to be a good husband to Cathy. When we first see Edgar, he and his sister have been fighting over a puppy – “That was their pleasure – to fight over a heap of warm hair, and each begin to cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it” (Chapter 6). They hurt the puppy in this exchange – shades of Heathcliff’s callous treatment of Isabella’s dog. And later Edgar can be petulant, petty, mean, controlling . . So I already had a feeling of Edgar having a lot in common with his nephew Linton – and really Emily Brontë doesn’t show any of the Lintons – Edgar, Isabella or Linton Heathcliff – as being anything but spoilt and pretty selfish. So I could combine all of these characteristics – with the strong possibility that one in particular might apply to Linton Heathcliff (because it’s not women that contribute to his downfall!) to create the character of Kat’s husband.
I’ve discussed a lot of this over on Teach Me Tonight if you’re interested – but I’ll just say that, just as in Sharon Kendrick’s The Forbidden Innocent, the mad wife in the attic is a part of the book that belongs in a very different, gothic story, I needed – as I said in my Dear Reader letter – to ‘take the wild, strong-willed Cathy and the dark, brooding, dangerous Heathcliff and let the learn about love’.
If you find that I’ve ‘ trimmed the characters, rejigged the story and characters, and turned Emily Bronte’s astonishing debut into a satisfactory romance.’ Then as far as I’m concerned I’ve done the job I was asked to do. If in doing that ‘she has also trimmed the wildness and the insanity of the original,’ then believe me that was deliberate as I truly believe that, no matter what, with all that wildness and insanity of the original Heathcliff and Catherine (I can’t even say hero and heroine as they were, as you say, so flawed and deeply dislikeable), with all that insanity there would never ever have been a happy ending for these two. The last words of the book – “I . . . wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth,” are deliberately ironical, put into the mouth of Lockwood who doesn’t/can’t understand anything that has been going on. And that would have been a totally other book from then one I was commissioned to write.
I love that we see Cathy differently! That room for discussion is one of the things that makes a book great, that the reader sees in the book things that another reader won’t. I don’t have your academic qualifications – the last time I did “Wuthering Heights” was for my first degree, and I had to go back to the book and refresh before I did this review!
I have to say that I still don’t like it, although it’s my mother’s all time favourite book. That and “Gone with the Wind.”
Wilful women.
Maybe, yes, Cathy didn’t grow up, but in her time, growing up would have meant moving from one man’s jurisdiction to another. Women were treated as children by many.
I do still think that you tamed the characters, but I can’t see how you could have done anything else for the Modern/Presents line. The word count alone means you can’t explore as fully as EB did.
I’d definitely recommend this as a well written category romance, and that’s something that’s enormously hard to do in its own right.
And it makes me wonder why this one was chosen for the line? I did read your “Teach Me Tonight” column, which I found enormously interesting, but only after I’d done the review, as I didn’t want anything to affect the way I felt about the book.
And how on earth do you write a book with a heroine the same name as yours? Skilz!