Well, I’m not much for giving up on a book. I’ve discovered many treasures by forging ahead and trusting other readers opinions. I’ll probably finish it.
@Karen hmmm… I don’t know then… I prefer to read because I add my own internal voice to all my characters. Sometimes audio distorts my imagination… But who know…. Lol
There are other great 18th century women’s lit novels. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre just don’t happen to fall in that category in some people’s eyes. I would choose anything by Anne Bronte any day.
The depressing, soul-sucking genre where there are no likable characters at all….you are not alone. Give Anne Bronte a try, I would choose her novels over Charlotte and Emily any day.
Ugh. I tried three times. Finally made myself finish it and i regretted it. Last time i ever made myself finish a book i didn’t like. There are too many good books out there. If you’re not into it, it’s ok 🙂
I read it with a friend, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it. As someone said before , the characters are just some mentally ill people. I think the problem for me it was just that, it is hard to conect with the character s and the story in general.
@Beverly I had the same experience. I must have missed something in WH and Jane Eyre. I have never understood why either of them are classics. I have read them both twice and watched the movies….nothing for me there at all. I do like Anne Bronte’s novels though.
I loved it. It’s a dark, emotional, Gothic, romantic tragedy. Heathcliff is a complete jerk, never redeems himself, while destroying people’s lives in the process. For me, that’s daring storytelling.
I think the book is a juxtaposition of the obsessive, destructive “love” of Cathy and Heathcliff versus the more healthy love of the next generation of Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw. If you see Catherine and Hareton as the ultimate protagonists of the book, the ending is no longer tragic, but hopeful bordering on happy.
Bless you! I found the drama to be way over the top. Heathcliff is a truly terrible character. Cruel in the extreme and an extremely abusive husband. Nothing romantic about him.
For me it was setting-both time and place, the isolation, and the wonderment that a preacher’s daughter could have come up with such a dark fantastic tale. When the movie came out in the early 70s, my 2 college roommates and I went to see it with a 4th young lady. The 2 who had never read the book, wept through it. The 2 of us that had, sat stoically and later agreed that filmmaker had focused on the wrong love story. Instead of Heathcliff and Kathy, they needed to focus on the love story of the 2 young cousins who helped each other blossom and grow!
The best part of Wuthering Heights is the first chapter. Just read that like it was a spooky short story and drop the rest! ? Oh and then enjoy the masterpiece that is Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, encapsulating and transcending the book: https://youtu.be/Fk-4lXLM34g
If you’re looking for a bodice ripper or a good rip roaring page turner, WH may not for you (it’s not for me either : ) Sometimes I can love a novel for atmosphere, emotion, exquisite descriptions or the poetry of the writing —- this isn’t one of them.
It’s a strange book. Not everyone’s cup of tea but it does evoke the Yorkshire Moors well. I love the Brontes’ novels but if you’re not enjoying it, you can give it up.
Oh I loved it. Cathy and Heathcliff are not supposed to be likeable characters IMO. They are the background against which a love between Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw can develop. She is dismissive of him at first, but by the end of the book a tentative friendship has developed and she is teaching Hareton to read. All of the people who could badly influence them are now dead. It is a tale of destructive obsession vs. meaningful love and friendship. I think anyone who sees Cathy and Heathcliff as heroine and hero is reading the book incorrectly.
Dont know if this makes sense: I liked the book, the writing, but hated the characters. They were well written, but those actions, that toxic relation…
@Andreia well, certainly not Cathy or Heathcliff! I always felt that Heathcliff would not have been so awful if he hadn’t been treated so badly after Mr. Earnshaw died.
@Susan I agree with you about Heathcliff, his actions were, for the most part, a result of how he was treated. But, and maybe it was because the story was sold to me as a romance, I was always trying to see that in those two…and just kept thinking “This is not what love is like!”
Throughout school that book was presented as star crossed lovers, oh so tragic, some great disappointment. Then I read it. I hated the main characters and wanted them dead. There was nothing romantic about it to me, which was how it had been presented to me.
I read it while at a beach house with no way to leave. I may have been 14 years old. ~~ And, kind of fell into it…yet do not remember if I actually ‘loved it’ or was able to ‘escape’ under duress into it…
I believe it is a novel best understood in the context of its era—think Lord Byron’s Byronic hero and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Romantic era (NOT the romance novels of today). Also read The Brontës, a biography by Juliet Barker and/or see To Walk Invisible https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5594080/
Romantic period literature is different from Romance – much of it was dark, brooding, and looked at the ugly side of humans – Frankenstein, Prometheus Bound, Kubla Khan and Ozimandus, Jane Eyre, madam Bovary, Tess of the D’Uberville, to the Dark Romantic Lit of the US – Poe, Hawthorne, Melville… most are not “happy” or “romances” and the characters are often unlikeable.
They are two of the most shallow and unpleasant characters that have ever graced of the pages of a novel. What is so juicy about that book is how absolutely unlikable pretty much everyone in the entire book is with very few exceptions.
I couldn’t stand it. I have always felt that Emily had a pretentious streak. I’ve read it referred to as a “screechinig melodrama” and I think that description is perfect. Out of curiosity, I just found the reviews when it first came out, and they are hilarious. I read it as a teenager and felt this way; read it again about 5 years ago. Nope.
What is it you don’t like? Heithclif suffers from deep emotional problems, pride, and revenge. He no longer wants to be looked down by others, especially Cathy. Cathy is very spoiled and suffers from bipolar. Think of her as a wave. She is never satisfied. These two broken characters make each other whole.
it was due to having been at the other house where she was attended to and treated like a princess. her pride got the better of her and she opened her big mouth but after learning that Heathcliff was listening, she said she never meant a word
I loved it in high school. Read it again a few years ago – doesn’t age well. It’s very much a “tumultuous, tortured love” story that adult women have no patience for.
Susan Michel maybe they get it and simply don’t enjoy it- radical thought, huh? I understand the historical and incredible musical genius of Beethoven’s 6th symphony, and I hate it. To know it not necessarily to love it.
@Susan I totally understand that part! I know a lot of folks that find these two characters just flat magnetic. I was attacked when I said the 6th was maudlin-?
To me, Cathy and Heathcliff are case studies of different presentations of what used to be called a “hysterical personality” by Freud. I feel a muddy, aimless miasma permeating the whole book. Maybe that’s part of the intent, I don’t know.
That’s neat. It was a bonding opportunity. I don’t plan to read it, but it’s interesting that sharing it was so transformative. Some required reading from highschool and college was better for that reason.
Thank you all for your opinions and insights. So interesting! And isn’t that the point of a book club? I’ve learned a lot and will finish the book with all this in mind.
First read it when I was around 10 and loved it. Have read it numerous times over the years. An all time favorite of mine. But we are all different and like different books so don’t feel that you have to finish it.
For me it helped i read it before knowing it was a classic? Just enjoy the love story, keep in mind the setting of the moors and the desperate isolation of this … And maybe bear in mind that author is probably writing her own sadness into it…such an emotional tragic story really…hard to read.
That sounds like good guidance. The times and places they inhabit definitely influence a writer, even if they’re writing about another time, as in science fiction.
@Carole definitely, it’s a sense of place and realising as well how lonely and desperate life was for Emily up there and reading it through that that brings it home as an adult. But as a kid I just remember getting lost I in the story and loving the melodrama, it’s very twilight ish really, an almost evil love interest saved by his love for Kathy and set in this rainy otherworldly place that traps them all inside it!
@Carole i know Heathcliff when you see him as an adult is just a very abusive angry man! But then I have my doubts about twilight too .. Not sure about any man as Edward does at one point who kidnaps his girlfriend “for her own good”!!! Erm, domestic violence red flags all over! You do have to suppress reality a tad to get into it…also sadly one theory is all Emily had as male role figures were her not great father and alkie brother so Heathcliff to her was probably very real ?
It’s an acquired taste. Personally, I did not like the themes of the book. The writing was superb and the descriptions were surreal, but the actual book itself, with themes of death and love that incites murder, was just not for me. However, My friend @Ergene did enjoy the book, so it’s really about what you personally like.
If you don’t like it you should probably give up. I personally prefer the second part as I find Cathy and Hindley’s children more likeable than their parents, but it is not a book I am very fond of.
I never liked Wuthering Heights. Overly dramatic, illogical, and needlessly morbid. Heathcliff is an irresponsible whiner and Catherine is a drama queen. Give it a hard pass, unless you want to read it as a how to of how not to write a novel.
Its not for everyone! Lol my sister has some sort of mind where it all makes sense sense me no that’s not my cup of tea. Shes the classical lover not me
…an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. I can understand it within the context of its time, but I’ve never understood why it continues to appeal to some.
Try to forget anything you may have heard about it being a love story and revel in the insanity. Its dark and there is an almost mythical, tribal quality to it. The different narrative frames keep you at a distance and over time Ive found different ways “in” on different rereads. It has an almost obsessive quality and if you can embrace that it might be for you, but it’s not for everyone.
I don’t think you are alone. While I’ve never read it, I don’t know many people who have read it that have actually enjoyed it.
So if I abandon it I’m not some kind of monster? It just seems so bleak and overwrought.
@Karen Of course not. I like it, but it is bleak and at times overwrought.
@Karen No monster judgment here, lol, don’t read what you aren’t enjoying, move on, enjoy your reading.
You probably expect to read a romance. It’s not. It’s the story of a wild, fatal, violent passion and merciless revenge.
And it’s utterly fabulous, IMO! Love it!
Omg I loved it so much.
Well, I’m not much for giving up on a book. I’ve discovered many treasures by forging ahead and trusting other readers opinions. I’ll probably finish it.
@Laura me too ?
Don’t kill yourself trying to get through it if you don’t start enjoying it soon, though! We’re all different. ?
we had a good discussion about it in our book group, but it is weird. too many Cathy’s!
What page are you on???
I’m listening to it. I’m about 4 hours into the 11 hour book.
@Karen hmmm… I don’t know then… I prefer to read because I add my own internal voice to all my characters. Sometimes audio distorts my imagination… But who know…. Lol
Nothing. It’s not for everyone. I found it overwrought and histrionic
I loved it! ♥️♥️ Favorite book after Jane Eyre
And I loved Jane Eyre. I’ll keep on then. You all can’t be wrong!
@Karen It’s different than Jane Eyre, though.
@Karen if you don’t like it, stop… Maybe start back up in a few months… Sometimes we may not be in the mood…
@Jean it is, but there was something that made me not put the book down… I fell in love with the characters
@Karen i loved Jane Eyre.hayed Wuthering Heights
@Laura Love Jane Eyre too. Both great books. Hoping Rebecca turns out to be on the same level.
@Laura I like it, too.
You’re not missing anything. It’s a snooze fest. Only read it because I had to in high school.
Nothing, it’s terrible
Hated it. A bunch of mentally ill individuals who i didn’t care for at all. Overrated for sure.
Lol apparently 18th century women’s lit is not for everyone.
@Laura I guess… But that’s ok ?
Laura Rushing Young Adult? Yeah… Same here lol…
There are other great 18th century women’s lit novels. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre just don’t happen to fall in that category in some people’s eyes. I would choose anything by Anne Bronte any day.
Hated it, cannot imagine how anyone sees this as a romance.
I finally admitted I don’t like that genre….
The depressing, soul-sucking genre where there are no likable characters at all….you are not alone. Give Anne Bronte a try, I would choose her novels over Charlotte and Emily any day.
I only know it because a teacher in grade school read it to us. Don’t remember anything about it other than there was a guy and a woman.
Stay with it. I was glad I did.
Ugh. I tried three times. Finally made myself finish it and i regretted it. Last time i ever made myself finish a book i didn’t like. There are too many good books out there. If you’re not into it, it’s ok 🙂
I read it with a friend, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it. As someone said before , the characters are just some mentally ill people. I think the problem for me it was just that, it is hard to conect with the character s and the story in general.
I didn’t enjoy it either and definitely didn’t like the ending
I hated it. Read and re-read trying to find something that made it a classic.
@Beverly wow! That’s really giving it a try!
Thought I must have missed something…nope.
@Beverly I had the same experience. I must have missed something in WH and Jane Eyre. I have never understood why either of them are classics. I have read them both twice and watched the movies….nothing for me there at all. I do like Anne Bronte’s novels though.
@Kerrie – have you ever seen the PBS drama about their lives? Explains a lot.
Yes, I have. If that is supposed to be the reason that I should enjoy WH and JE … sorry, it doesn’t do it for me.
Not me either but explains why their world was so dark and disappointing. Think Anne didn’t buy into a lot of the drama.
Bleak
Didn’t care for it at all. Not one likable character in the entire book and I despised Cathy.
i could never read it. i’ve tried several times in my life and never get more than 20 pages in
I wasn’t a big fan of it either.
I loved it. It’s a dark, emotional, Gothic, romantic tragedy. Heathcliff is a complete jerk, never redeems himself, while destroying people’s lives in the process. For me, that’s daring storytelling.
I think the book is a juxtaposition of the obsessive, destructive “love” of Cathy and Heathcliff versus the more healthy love of the next generation of Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw. If you see Catherine and Hareton as the ultimate protagonists of the book, the ending is no longer tragic, but hopeful bordering on happy.
A kid that tortures animals… There’s your sign folks. Not boyfriend material in all honesty.
Bless you! I found the drama to be way over the top. Heathcliff is a truly terrible character. Cruel in the extreme and an extremely abusive husband. Nothing romantic about him.
Depends on your definition of “enjoying.”
From my POV — nothing. One of my least favorite books ever.
I don’t like it either. A bunch of really despicable characters.
It is not a favorite of mine, either. I could feel sympathy for the characters, but I didn’t really like any of them. ?
For me it was setting-both time and place, the isolation, and the wonderment that a preacher’s daughter could have come up with such a dark fantastic tale.
When the movie came out in the early 70s, my 2 college roommates and I went to see it with a 4th young lady. The 2 who had never read the book, wept through it. The 2 of us that had, sat stoically and later agreed that filmmaker had focused on the wrong love story. Instead of Heathcliff and Kathy, they needed to focus on the love story of the 2 young cousins who helped each other blossom and grow!
I didn’t like it either.
I loved it until about page 300 and I got tired of Heathcliff whining. A case where the movie is better.
I didn’t like it.
It
It’s all mood and atmosphere.
Original 1939 movie was fabulous but very little to do with the book!
??
The best part of Wuthering Heights is the first chapter. Just read that like it was a spooky short story and drop the rest! ? Oh and then enjoy the masterpiece that is Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, encapsulating and transcending the book: https://youtu.be/Fk-4lXLM34g
@Stacey https://youtu.be/gUuWv36OCzM
?
I loved it!
Watch the version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche currently on Amazon Prime. That version got it right!
I read it in high school because I had to…struggled all the way through it.
Not a fan
Try James Patterson.
That’s kind of mean, LOL
@Susan sorry.
@John I thought it was funny! 😉
@Susan I love a good mystery!……
nothing. It is one of the most depressing books I have ever read, and I have read a LOT of books in my 54 years
It’s not for everyone. Dark, grim, depressing.
If you’re looking for a bodice ripper or a good rip roaring page turner, WH may not for you (it’s not for me either : ) Sometimes I can love a novel for atmosphere, emotion, exquisite descriptions or the poetry of the writing —- this isn’t one of them.
I disliked it. The main characters were repulsive.
@Leslie agreed – it’s greatest flaw is the essential unlikeability of most of the characters.
You’re probably not a teenager girl.
@Shih I was and hated it.
@Beverly Oh ok, than you probably had a happy childhood.
@Shih on and off. Never had much patience for self inflicted suffering.
It’s depressing. Lol
There’s really nothing to enjoy about it
Some of us disagree. I love it.
I agree completely
I love it but it’s definitely not one that everyone enjoys so I’d say you’re not missing anything. It’s just not your cup of tea
Loved it
Loved it as an angsty teenager–as a rational adult, not so much.
Nothing. It’s the worst.
Nothing
It’s a strange book. Not everyone’s cup of tea but it does evoke the Yorkshire Moors well. I love the Brontes’ novels but if you’re not enjoying it, you can give it up.
Oh I loved it. Cathy and Heathcliff are not supposed to be likeable characters IMO. They are the background against which a love between Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw can develop. She is dismissive of him at first, but by the end of the book a tentative friendship has developed and she is teaching Hareton to read. All of the people who could badly influence them are now dead. It is a tale of destructive obsession vs. meaningful love and friendship. I think anyone who sees Cathy and Heathcliff as heroine and hero is reading the book incorrectly.
Dont know if this makes sense: I liked the book, the writing, but hated the characters.
They were well written, but those actions, that toxic relation…
You’re not supposed to like the characters.
@Susan ever?!
@Andreia well, certainly not Cathy or Heathcliff! I always felt that Heathcliff would not have been so awful if he hadn’t been treated so badly after Mr. Earnshaw died.
@Susan I agree with you about Heathcliff, his actions were, for the most part, a result of how he was treated. But, and maybe it was because the story was sold to me as a romance, I was always trying to see that in those two…and just kept thinking “This is not what love is like!”
@Andreia. You’re quite right, and whoever told you it was a romance was wrong! Or only in a twisted sense.
It’s just a 19 th century romantic fantasy- those Bronte girls were pretty sexually repressed.
You’re not missing anything, it’s a wholey and soully depressing read
I couldn’t have said it better. I have similar thoughts about Jane Eyre. I’m an Anne Bronte fan. 🙂
All those books give me a headache from the eye rolling I do. My sister in law however, adores them. I am much too cynical and can’t deal with it.
Throughout school that book was presented as star crossed lovers, oh so tragic, some great disappointment. Then I read it. I hated the main characters and wanted them dead. There was nothing romantic about it to me, which was how it had been presented to me.
Sometimes you have to be a teenager to enjoy a book. Felt the same about Catch 22 and most of Hemingway.
@Melinda Hemingway distressed me from the get go but Catch 22 made me hoot. Just depends I guess.
Tried a few times to read it. Couldn’t stand the characters.
Nothing. They are horrid characters. Not my fave.
I agree: I couldn’t stand either Heathcliff or Catherine in the first part, but I found the second part – the story of their children more redeeming.
I read it while at a beach house with no way to leave. I may have been 14 years old. ~~ And, kind of fell into it…yet do not remember if I actually ‘loved it’ or was able to ‘escape’ under duress into it…
Try reading it out loud to yourself. The language tastes good!
Nothing. It wasn’t my thing either.
In university even my prof didn’t like teaching it. I couldn’t stand it. Same with Pride and Prejudice.
I believe it is a novel best understood in the context of its era—think Lord Byron’s Byronic hero and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Romantic era (NOT the romance novels of today). Also read The Brontës, a biography by Juliet Barker and/or see To Walk Invisible https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5594080/
You’re missing being a 1950’s 12-year-old girl.
1950’s teenagers did not make this a classic.
Romantic period literature is different from Romance – much of it was dark, brooding, and looked at the ugly side of humans – Frankenstein, Prometheus Bound, Kubla Khan and Ozimandus, Jane Eyre, madam Bovary, Tess of the D’Uberville, to the Dark Romantic Lit of the US – Poe, Hawthorne, Melville… most are not “happy” or “romances” and the characters are often unlikeable.
Loved it age 14. By 20 nope
They are two of the most shallow and unpleasant characters that have ever graced of the pages of a novel. What is so juicy about that book is how absolutely unlikable pretty much everyone in the entire book is with very few exceptions.
I couldn’t stand it. I have always felt that Emily had a pretentious streak. I’ve read it referred to as a “screechinig melodrama” and I think that description is perfect. Out of curiosity, I just found the reviews when it first came out, and they are hilarious. I read it as a teenager and felt this way; read it again about 5 years ago. Nope.
Never could stand it, nor gone with the wind –
What is it you don’t like? Heithclif suffers from deep emotional problems, pride, and revenge. He no longer wants to be looked down by others, especially Cathy. Cathy is very spoiled and suffers from bipolar. Think of her as a wave. She is never satisfied. These two broken characters make each other whole.
They would have, had Cathy not been a snob.
@Susan yes she is annoying
Well, and she says to Nelly ( and Heathcliff hears her) that marrying him would degrade her. Quite a betrayal.
it was due to having been at the other house where she was attended to and treated like a princess. her pride got the better of her and she opened her big mouth but after learning that Heathcliff was listening, she said she never meant a word
Pat Benatar theme song
I loved it in high school. Read it again a few years ago – doesn’t age well. It’s very much a “tumultuous, tortured love” story that adult women have no patience for.
Some of us do. Some of us understand it a lot better as adults than we did in high school. I’m almost 70 and I love it.
i LOVE the classics and have read quite a few, WH and Anna Karenina were two of my least favorite.
Learning to enjoy the tragic character can be hard. They are severely over dramatic and trend to be wordy, but worth the read.
@Kathy I just call my mother.
The Satanic Hero.
Darkness, human degradation, grief to the point of destruction….
And brilliantly done. Yet so many don’t get it.
@Pat , sorry…maybe that wasn’t funny ?♀️ Perfect timing though.
Susan Michel maybe they get it and simply don’t enjoy it- radical thought, huh? I understand the historical and incredible musical genius of Beethoven’s 6th symphony, and I hate it. To know it not necessarily to love it.
@Lucinda yes, but I’m talking more about those who believe that we’re supposed to like the characters and find Heathcliff alluring.
@Susan I totally understand that part! I know a lot of folks that find these two characters just flat magnetic. I was attacked when I said the 6th was maudlin-?
To me, Cathy and Heathcliff are case studies of different presentations of what used to be called a “hysterical personality” by Freud. I feel a muddy, aimless miasma permeating the whole book. Maybe that’s part of the intent, I don’t know.
Never really did like it, either!
After abandoning the book a couple times, it became one of my favorites. I’ve reread it a few times.
I liked the complexity of the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff.
You’re missing Nothing :)…..God that’s an awful book
I didn’t like it either.
Hated it.
LOL…you’re not the only one. I hated the story.
I feel ya!
It was like a revelation to me as a teenager. I love it still. Reread it every couple of years. Totally worth the journey!
Not every book is great for everyone every time. There’s a lot of “great” lit that’s done nothing for me personally.
I hated it..& found no one could really tell me why it’s thought to be so great…
watch the movie
I’d have hated it except my sister and I were discussing a chapter at a time, and that kept it interesting.
That’s neat. It was a bonding opportunity. I don’t plan to read it, but it’s interesting that sharing it was so transformative. Some required reading from highschool and college was better for that reason.
This is a rare case where the movie is better than the book…took me forever to read it through.
What’s to like?
Neither did I.
Yuck. Me either. ?
You aren’t missing a thing.
Thank you all for your opinions and insights. So interesting! And isn’t that the point of a book club? I’ve learned a lot and will finish the book with all this in mind.
Cultural heights?
I know I must have read it as a kid, can’t remember the premise, would you refresh my memory, want to know if I should re-read
it must be the 200 characters named Catherine.
Lol
I’m not sure.
rip
First read it when I was around 10 and loved it. Have read it numerous times over the years. An all time favorite of mine. But we are all different and like different books so don’t feel that you have to finish it.
For me it helped i read it before knowing it was a classic? Just enjoy the love story, keep in mind the setting of the moors and the desperate isolation of this … And maybe bear in mind that author is probably writing her own sadness into it…such an emotional tragic story really…hard to read.
That sounds like good guidance. The times and places they inhabit definitely influence a writer, even if they’re writing about another time, as in science fiction.
@Daisie you made some good points. The moors, to me, have always been a major character by themselves.
@Carole definitely, it’s a sense of place and realising as well how lonely and desperate life was for Emily up there and reading it through that that brings it home as an adult. But as a kid I just remember getting lost I in the story and loving the melodrama, it’s very twilight ish really, an almost evil love interest saved by his love for Kathy and set in this rainy otherworldly place that traps them all inside it!
@Carole i know Heathcliff when you see him as an adult is just a very abusive angry man! But then I have my doubts about twilight too .. Not sure about any man as Edward does at one point who kidnaps his girlfriend “for her own good”!!! Erm, domestic violence red flags all over! You do have to suppress reality a tad to get into it…also sadly one theory is all Emily had as male role figures were her not great father and alkie brother so Heathcliff to her was probably very real ?
I hated it. 🙁
It’s an acquired taste. Personally, I did not like the themes of the book. The writing was superb and the descriptions were surreal, but the actual book itself, with themes of death and love that incites murder, was just not for me. However, My friend @Ergene did enjoy the book, so it’s really about what you personally like.
If you don’t like it you should probably give up. I personally prefer the second part as I find Cathy and Hindley’s children more likeable than their parents, but it is not a book I am very fond of.
I don’t think I ever read it, but just because its a “classic” doesn’t mean you’re going to love it. Move on to something else!
Loved the book…movie too…
@Kathi loved the most recent bbc/pbs version.
I hated it
I have never liked it and read it more than once (teens, 20s, 30s) to see if my opinion changed with age. Nope. Let it go
@Melissa same here
It’s a bit of a drag…
Watch the movie, maybe that will help. It is rather sad though.
I had the ill fortune to have had to read that novel TWICE in high school, in 2 different English classes. UGH! Dreary and depressing.??
Laurence Olivier.
I never liked Wuthering Heights. Overly dramatic, illogical, and needlessly morbid. Heathcliff is an irresponsible whiner and Catherine is a drama queen. Give it a hard pass, unless you want to read it as a how to of how not to write a novel.
I agree totally-just could not find anything redeeming when I recently re-read this book for classic book club I’m in.
Its not for everyone! Lol my sister has some sort of mind where it all makes sense sense me no that’s not my cup of tea. Shes the classical lover not me
I too couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the darkness of this classic.
…an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. I can understand it within the context of its time, but I’ve never understood why it continues to appeal to some.
@Andi me either…
it is not a romantic novel. it took me two reads years apart to get it. once i got a love story out of my head i got it but really didn’t like it
Nothing! Hated it!
I didn’t like the book or the movie. There are plenty of other good classics.
I used to like it til I realized the ending….
Oh my gosh, had to read it for a book club last year; none of us liked it. It makes my list of ‘worst books read’.
Most depressing book ever!
Exactly!
I loved it when I was 12 with a vivid imagination. Not so sure I’d enjoy it now LOL
I read it but I didn’t love it
I watched it on PBS recently. Hated the Heathcliffe
character.
@Jill me too… disliked all the characters for various reasons, and the plot, and the setting…. etc
Try to forget anything you may have heard about it being a love story and revel in the insanity. Its dark and there is an almost mythical, tribal quality to it. The different narrative frames keep you at a distance and over time Ive found different ways “in” on different rereads. It has an almost obsessive quality and if you can embrace that it might be for you, but it’s not for everyone.