Wuthering Heights Audiobook Review by Emily Brontë – Amy Lou Wood Reads The Romance of the Moment | Emily Brontë

RIt is a version of Wuthering Heights that failed to anger Brontë’s followers. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film was criticized for its grittiness and bleakness, while Emerald Fennell’s remake, which hits theaters on Valentine’s Day, has been described as “aggressively provocative” after preview screenings. Maybe now is the time to return to the source material. In the audio, there have already been readings by Michael Kitchener, Danielle Massey, Juliet Stevenson, Patricia Routledge and Joan Froggatt, although I prefer this 2020 edition narrated by Amy Lou Wood, of Sex Education and The White Lotus fame.

Emily Brontë’s novel The Tempest is set in Yorkshire, and begins with Mr. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrashcross Grange, who visits his sullen landlord, Heathcliff, on his remote farm where the snow is falling. As he sleeps through the night, he stumbles upon the diary of the late Catherine Earnshaw, who writes about her love for Heathcliff, an orphan brought by her father to live with the family. Later, Mr. Lockwood has a nightmare in which Catherine’s ghost begs to be let in through a window (a scene immortalized in a Kate Bush song). The next day he returned to Thrushcross Grange where he asked the housekeeper, Nellie, to tell him about the Earnshaws. Nellie shares a dark story of abuse, revenge, and doomed love.

Wood breathes new life into this whirlwind novel, capturing Nellie’s chatty tone and the early brutality of Catherine and Heathcliff. As circumstances push these inseparable young people apart, this wild abandonment turns into devastation and discord that is passed down through the generations.

Available via Penguin Audio, 13 hours 58 minutes

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