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Summary
Summary
A gripping and heartbreaking novel that re-imagines life at Wuthering Heights through the eyes of the Earnshaws' loyal servant, Nelly Dean.
Young Nelly Dean has been Hindley's closest companion for as long as she can remember, living freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights. But when the benevolence of the master brings a wild child into the house, Nelly must follow in her mother's footsteps, be called "servant" and give herself to the family completely.
But Nelly is not the only one who must serve. When a new heir is born, a reign of violence begins that will test Nelly's spirit as she finds out what it is to know true sacrifice.
Nelly Dean is a wonderment of storytelling, a heartbreaking accompaniment to Emily Bronte's adored work. It is the story of a woman who is fated to bear the pain of a family she is unable to leave, and unable to save.
Author Notes
Alison Case received her B.A. from Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in English Literature from Cornell University. Case is a professor at Williams College and is the author of two books and several articles on Nineteenth-century British fiction and poetry. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. This is her first novel.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Case's debut novel is a leisurely paced, highly ambitious, and somewhat overlong work based on Emily Brontë's classic Wuthering Heights. The housekeeper Nelly Dean retells the popular saga in a lengthy, chatty letter addressed to Mr. Lockwood, who briefly rented the nearby Thrushcross Grange estate before leaving for Italy and later London. Fourteen-year-old Nelly lives with the affluent Earnshaws at Wuthering Heights and plays with their children, Hindley and Cathy, when the "queer, filthy" orphan lad Heathcliff is adopted into the family. After Mr. Earnshaw expels Nelly for her dereliction of duty, her mother, Mary, intercedes to have her rehired as a paid house servant and rescues her from the attacks of her violent father, Tom. As the years pass, Nelly grows more intertwined with the Earnshaws' dysfunctional household, through her pregnancy with Hindley, his empty promise to marry her, and her miscarriage. Fortunately, she befriends her family doctor's son, the level-headed Bodkin, who sagely says to her that "you are not obliged to keep working here." Passionate fans of Brontë's masterpiece will find much to admire in Case's richly textured novel, while casual readers may find the pace too plodding and the gold-hearted Nelly too accommodating. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Housekeeper Nelly Dean tells a multigenerational saga of wild weather and impossible love at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Wait, didn't Emily Bront already write that book? Most retellings of Great Novels at least change the narrator. Not this one: it's still the down-to-earth Nelly, still bending the ear of Mr. Lockwood, this time in a letter explaining that she left out a few things the first time around. Once you get past the artificiality and hubris of the setup and an awkward first chapter or two, though, you'll find both an interesting critique of Wuthering Heights and an absorbing, convincing, and historically sensitive novel. In this version, Case's debut, Nelly has relatively little time for Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw, the star-crossed lovers of the original. Instead, it's her own story that absorbs her: her childhood at the Heights, her position as something between a servant and a child of the house, her education, the tragic passion that grows between her and Cathy's drunken brother, Hareton, and the burden that falls on heras the only sober, intelligent, and capable member of the householdto keep the Earnshaw family from falling into ruin. Case explores every permutation of pregnancy and motherhood, populating Nelly's story with illegitimate, abandoned, miscarried, adopted, and aborted babies and fetuses. Her central and final revelationabout the shared parentage of important charactersis an interesting gloss on the original story, but she hints about it so strongly at the start that by the end it's no surprise. Themes of violence, drunkenness, incest, and the supernatural evoke Emily Brontas you'd expect in a book that borrows its outline and setting from hersbut Nelly's combination of competence and passionate self-restraint can seem more like something out of a novel by her sister Charlotte. Although its obvious audience is Bront lovers, this well-written historical novel brings enough depth and new material to stand on its own. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The inhabitants of Wuthering Heights are reborn in this new view of the Brontë classic. The emphasis shifts from the tempestuous relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights to a more solid love between Nelly and Hindley, the Earnshaws' eldest child. Nelly, whose mother is Mrs. Earnshaw's dearest friend, is raised at Wuthering Heights as part of the Earnshaw family until she is temporarily banished in an incident soon after Heathcliff arrives. She returns in the status of a servant. She and Hindley are childhood companions who become teenage lovers and intend to marry, a plan thwarted by their parents for a reason revealed only in the closing pages. So Nelly deals with her anger and pain when Hindley brings home his bride, Frances, and then mothers their infant son, Hareton, when consumptive Frances dies soon after giving birth. Instead of the gothic drama and passion of Brontë, Case's first novel provides an emotionally balanced account, filling in some gaps and featuring strong, smart Nelly, who is her own woman despite living by the mores of her time. A fast-moving pleasure, this novel is a likely draw for book clubs and a must for Brontë fans.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Dust off your old class notes on "Wuthering Heights" before delving into this first novel by a professor of English at Williams College. In the original, Ellen Dean is a loyal servant, one of the novel's two main narrators. In Case's "Nelly Dean," Nelly revisits what she calls her "half-told tale," creating a "homespun gray yarn woven in among the bright-dyed and glossy dark threads of the Earnshaws and Lintons," and insisting that she's a "good deal less, and more, than a good servant." As she recasts her story, Nelly fills gaps in the original and draws a portrait of her own life of caretaking and sacrifice. Her perceptions are so specific and accurate that you have to wonder if Nelly 2.0 is, in part, a riposte to literary scholars who have called Bronte's Nelly an unreliable narrator. Here, for example, she describes looking after Hareton as a newborn baby: "He was with me both day and night, and I never had more than a couple of hours when he did not need my care, so of course I slept but little. I could not attend to many of my regular duties, and the loss of those familiar routines made my new state seem that much stranger. It seemed as if time slowed to a snail's pace, in which hours felt like days, and days like weeks." While not a palimpsest of "Wuthering Heights," "Nelly Dean" is no country for Bronte novices, especially at the start, when characters are introduced at a rapid-fire clip. Still, it's a country well worth exploring.
Library Journal Review
Debut author Case crafts a masterly reimagining of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights by casting Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, as the central character, with Heathcliff and Cathy in peripheral roles. Nelly grows up with the Earnshaw children, practically a member of the family, until the master brings home young Heathcliff, pushing Nelly onto the path of dedicated servant to the only family she has ever wanted. Like Brontë's novel, Nelly's story is full of passion, violence, betrayal, revenge, and especially suffering as she endures the thoughtless cruelty of the gentry she serves. To see the familiar characters of this classic through the eyes of Nelly, who knows all their fears and faults so well, is an eye-opening experience. But is she a reliable narrator, given prejudices engendered by her callous treatment at the hands of those she loves? VERDICT Case's skilled reworking of Brontë's masterpiece is a fabulous companion to the original as well as a wonderful stand-alone read. Brontë fans and readers who delight in literary fiction fashioned as 19th-century novels will eagerly snap up this book-and may be tempted to reread Wuthering Heights just for the pleasure of comparing the two novels. Perfect for book clubs.-Barbara Clark-Greene, Groton P.L., CT © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.