Alison Croggon's 'Dark Spring' is a gothic retelling of 'Wuthering Heights' but with the addition of the lore as divined by vindictive wizards and ruled by generations-long vendetta.
Lina (Catherine) is the enchanting but willful daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood companion, Damek (Heathcliff), have grown up privileged and spoiled, and they're devoted to each other to the point of obsession.
But Lina's violet eyes betray her for a witch, and witches are not tolerated in this brutally patriarchal society. Her rank protects her from persecution, but it cannot protect her from tragedy and heartbreak. And ultimately to the devastation that ensues as destructive longing unleashes Lina's wrath, and with it her forbidden power.
There are differences to the Bronte classic, Lina doesn't have a brother, but the consequences in this version are similar. I also found the narrator (Emily Bronte's Lockwood) here named Hammel, is just as reminiscent of Harker in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula', and the description of his journey and arrival at the Northern Plateau beneath the Black Mountains parallels Harker's appearance, especially as he passes the stone towers and all the grave markers - a desolate landscape of cemeteries.
It is Alison's vivid depiction of the landscape which places you in the same Bronte-esk atmosphere, the Plateau could as easily be the moors, the bleak weather, the houses a dark brooding bastion, and its remoteness from civilisation.
Whether drawn by the romantic, the magical, or the gothic, readers will be irresistibly compelled by the passion of this tragic tale - even if you know the ending, you don't know the story.
Sunday, 7 September 2014
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