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Reviewed by:
  • Catherine by April Lindner
  • Karen Coats
Lindner, April. Catherine. Poppy/Little, 2013. 309p. ISBN 978-0-316-19692-5 $17.99 Ad Gr. 9–12.

In this contemporary retelling of Wuthering Heights, sixteen-year-old Chelsea learns that her mother, Catherine, who she thought was dead, may in fact be alive and living in New York City. Chelsea runs away to find her, her only clue being the address from a letter sent fourteen years earlier when Catherine left her husband and daughter to return to her unusual childhood home, a nightclub called The Underground, in an attempt to reconcile with her first love, Hence. Chelsea finds Hence, now the club owner, and although he is gruff and disagreeable, he allows her to stay in her mother’s old room; there Chelsea finds an old journal of her mother’s that describes how Hence came to the club, endeared himself to her father, alienated her brother, and became Catherine’s lover. Chelsea also meets Hence’s protégé, a boy named Coop, and enlists his reluctant help in tracking down the clues that help them all discover Catherine’s grisly fate. Bringing the haunting, romantic flavor of Wuthering Heights to the alternative music scene of contemporary NYC doesn’t work nearly as well as Lindner’s earlier literary reappropriation, Jane (BCCB 1/11); neither Catherine nor Hence approach the broody, intense appeal of their originals, Heathcliff’s compelling revenge plot against Hindley is completely abandoned, and the atmospherics of lower Manhattan simply don’t wuther. However, by its own lights this is a readable, emotionally restrained double romance that sifts questions of the wisdom of following your heart no matter what the cost, and what you might ultimately learn from your parents’ romantic mistakes. An author’s note explains her adaptation process.

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