"I Thought, Though Everybody Hated and Despised Each Other, They Could Not Avoid Loving Me - And They Have All Turned to Enemies in a Few Hours."

Confession: I didn't know what Wuthering Heights was about before I started reading it. And I mistakenly lumped it in with Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. I assumed it was likely a love story, with characters that were complicated and a love you may not always have rooted for but you came around to in the end. Friends to lovers trope, perhaps. Spoiler alert: Wuthering Heights is not that book. 

It's been a long time since I came close to DNF-ing a book that I started. One that I despised so much that I just didn't care how it turned out. But that's where I was with about 100 pages left of this book. 

I very strongly disliked this book. And I genuinely don't understand how people can say they love it or that it's their favorite. This is not a love story. There is no love in there anywhere. There is selfishness and narcissism, toxicity and vengeance. Sure, someone might say that Heathcliff and Catherine had a complicated love and their choices are what drove the tragedy of the rest of the story. But they are both awful people and I couldn't give two squats if they were together or not. Because they were petty and petulant and snobbish and vindictive. So it's hard to get on board with the main "love story" of this book when you despise everything about the main characters. 

There are no redeeming characters in this (except maybe Nelly Dean, the narrator. Or Lockwood, the temporary tenant who Nelly narrates the story to). You don't root for anyone. They're all just wretched, miserable, and awful people. Heathcliff is truly one of the most villainous characters I've ever seen in print. Shit, I'd take undead, definition-of-evil Dracula over this turd. And passing their misery on to their children in such horrible manipulative ways, and the children all succumbing and becoming wretched awful people themselves (although, in fairness, they didn't know any other way than to follow the examples of the horrible people around them and they literally had no way of extracting themselves from their circumstances). 

I do give Emily Bronte a lot of credit. The story itself was masterfully crafted and felt like a Shakespearian tragedy - you could see what was coming but the inertia of the outcome was inevitable. And she managed to evoke very strong feelings in me about these characters and this book. But just not feelings that make me like the book. So bravo to her for that. 

I'm glad this is over with. I'll not revisit. And I'll have bad things to say if anyone ever asks me about this book. 

Thanks for coming to my salty, bitter TedTalk on the craptastic-ness of Wuthering Heights. 

I'm using this book for the PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt of "A book with a love triangle." Although if I could put the word "love" in quotation marks I would. 

Next up is The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever. Wish me luck. 

177 books to go.