The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Even though it is relatively short, I struggled through this book! What makes me suffer more however is the fact that I bought it!

There are two aspects of this novel: the characters and the narration. For me, it failed miserably in both. Here's why:

Jean Brodie is a primary teacher, who claims to be in her "prime", a phrase repeated so many times in the novel that it becomes something of a brain stab by the time you reach the end.
Unfortunately, the only thing Miss Brodie does in her prime is show her arrogance by looking down upon her colleagues, the education system and practically everything under the Sun. She shows more interest in teaching the things that she likes to little girls under her care than what she's supposed to.
Over the years, this teaching turns to living vicariously through the sexual life of one of these girls, whom she instigates to have an affair with a married colleague she loves.

Yes, so far, it does sound like something that you might want to read but let's come to the characters in the book. They don't develop gradually, they simply just develop. Also, there are so many of them and almost every line about them is so full of repetitive descriptions and notions, you don't grow fond of any of them. You just grow more and more tired of them.
The same fault lies in the narration, which is boring, repetitive and lacks both pace and lucidity, except in the last 20 pages or so.

All in all, you can save yourself the horror simply by watching Maggie Smith's awar winning performance in the movie rather than crawling through the book. So, yes, read it only if you absolutely have to, like I did, however, even if you die without reading this, you're not missing out on anything grand!

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I grew up on Classics and so, I grew up loving them. But 'Wuthering Heights' was different. I practically have my own love-story with this book as if it were Heathcliff and I were Cathy. And therefore, try as I may to make my review short, I can't help spilling out the details of my romance with 'Wuthering Heights':

I picked up this book from the library of the college where my Mum taught. It was an old, red, battered kind of copy which smelled richly of dust and old pages. You could almost call it loathsome, considering students had scribbled upon it, the print was bad and some pages were ripped off.

On 19th December 2008, coincidentally Emily Brontë's 160th Death Anniversary, I started reading it for it was a dark and stormy afternoon that generally forces me to read a classic. And so, perched on my windowsill, occassionally glancing at the hills beyond, I began reading this book. It was the roughest, crudest thing I had ever read in the name of a classic and didn't matter much at first. In fact, I was quite repulsed at the idea of Heathcliff as a hero and when it was over, boy, was I glad!

However, a week after I had returned it, I began to miss Cathy, miss the passion and intensity with which Heathcliff loved her, the easy style with which the author had conveyed such deep emotions and so, I begged my Father to buy me a copy of it. It wasn't just a book to be read and forgotten. It was a book to be cherished and owned, to be read whenever the sky turned fiercely, wrathfully grey, a book to be carried to your grave with you!

I thought I was growing crazy but then people like Dr. D.V. Puri, my mother's mentor and guide and my younger sister, 'The Book Thief' convinced me that it wasn't abnormal to love 'Wuthering Heights'. Most people couldn't help loving it provided they leafed through it's pages again!

My love for the book deepened everytime people criticised it in front of me.
I never defended it, much like Cathy, but waited for them to read it and find out how powerful, how deep, how intense it was! I'm glad that most of the critics are gradually enthralled once they read it again!

So, if you hate 'Wuthering Heights', if you think it to be a waste of paper, go through it again. Read it again sometime later but don't judge it in the first go. Much like its protagonist, it is a shabby little street urchin who is destined to be a wicked yet charming prince in the end!

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