Catherine the Ghost

September 1, 2024
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Koja's atmospheric latest (after Dark Factory, 2022) is a lush and evocative coda to Emily Bront�'s 1847 gothic classic Wuthering Heights. Long-buried Catherine Earnshaw haunts the confines of Wuthering Heights, where her daughter, Catherine Linton, languishes under the watchful eye of her abusive uncle Heathcliff, her mother's tortured soulmate who longs to be reunited with her in death. As Catherine reflects on the truth of her life and observes those still living, the daughter she never knew grows closer to discovering her secrets. Unfolding from both women's point of view--the elder Catherine in defiant, stream of consciousness first person, the younger in detached third person that underscores her lack of agency--Koja's moody novella explores the bonds that transcend death. Fans of feminist retellings of classic novels will enjoy this compelling corrective to Bront�'s original, which situates doomed heroine Catherine Earnshaw's perspective front and center alongside that of her previously silenced and disempowered daughter. Includes illustrations (not seen).

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Starred review from August 5, 2024
A companion to Wuthering Heights much in the way that Wide Sargasso Sea is a companion to Jane Eyre, this brilliant retelling from Koja (Dark Factory) whisks readers to the wild English moors but shifts the focus from romantic relationships to a familial one. The narration alternates between the ghost of Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw, who longs for Heathcliff and yearns to be let back into her former home, and her daughter, Catherine Linton the younger, who, having never known her mother, is newly widowed and living at Wuthering Heights. Those familiar with Brontë’s original work will recognize this as the novel’s later period, set six months after narrator Nelly first recounts the tale to Heights visitor Lockwood. Koja digs deeper into this period, keeping an admirable constancy to the tone of Brontë’s novel while giving greater voice to the two Cathys and their turbulent mother-daughter relationship. Ghost-Catherine’s sections are surreal, disconsolate depictions of her frustration and desire, while Catherine’s show her to be a capable, self-possessed young woman. Fans of the original will be thoroughly impressed.