The Weekend Reads

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The Faithless: a ripping yarn

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (Penguin Classics)

'Tis the season for film adapations of Bronte books: first Jane Eyre, now Wuthering Heights which opens today in a raw and revisionist adaptation that strips the story to its roots.

All that I will say about the movie is that is a very interesting companion piece to the book: but in truth it's only half the story. And that's a problem with most of the movie adaptations, they only tell half the story.

Forget your Maeve Binchy's, Cecelia Ahern's and Marian Keyes - this is the real deal and probably the greatest novel about the raw, elemental and complex nature of love. Even if you haven't read Emily Bronte's book you are probably be familiar with the story.

Wuthering Heights is, simply put, a savage and unforgettable love story set in the wild Yorkshire moors at the end of the 18th century.

It is a story told in flashback - of Earnshaw, master of Wuthering Heights, who returns from his travels and brings with him an urchin he has a found on the streets of Liverpool. This is a wild, ragged thing - with gypsy looks - called Heathcliff. Earnshaw's own children, Hindley and Cathy, are not too impressed.

But gradually Heathcliff and Cathy, who is as wild in her own way as Heathcliff is, become inseperable. At one point she tells one of the maids: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." (p68)

But she marries her neighbour Edgar because he is young and handsome and he will become very wealthy. And Heathcliff runs away to the moors and another life for three years.

But he does return, as he has to, to find Cathy married to Edgar and settled into the big house. But his savage desire and love for her has not died. He plays Cathy off against Edgar's sister, Isabella, and them marries her but has never lost his love for

Catherine dies after giving birth to Cathy. And that's the movie: only half the story and half the book.

We don't get Isabella leaving Heathcliff, bringing with her their son, Linton.

We see Heathcliff wants his son, Linton to marry young Cathy so that he will become the master of the big house. And we don't see the madness and love sickness that Heathcliff descends into.

Most film versions, tell only half the story of Wuthering Heights - so much more happens after Cathy dies - in truth this is when the really memorable part of the story happens. Yes it is a book that demands your time but once you start you will be sucked into this story of passion and revenge and an undying love, right up to that unforgettable closing image.

Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte's one and only novel. It was published in 1847 a year before her death at the age of 30. She died from tuberculosis.

It was published to very mixed reviews and very little fuss. Even Emily sister's Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre, was ambivalent about the book and wary of its main character, the rough, dangerous and irresistible Heathcliff.

It's likely that many will flock to the movie and I know that whatever your views on it are, it will draw you back to the book - where you can get the full story.

THE FAITHLESS BY MARTINA COLE (Headline)

If you like your thrillers straight up, bloody and uncomplicated - and who doesn't? - then this is the book for you.

I can't recall the last time I read a novel with one hundred and sixty-two chapters (plus an epilogue) so quickly and with such a need to know what happens next and to whom!

THE PLOT: Over 453 pages (yep, some chapters are very short) Cole drops us into the seamy pit of East London gangsters and then pummels us with dirty deeds involving machetes and sundry other tools. This ripping (and chopping and carving) tale centres on arch bitch Cynthia Tailor, a woman with a heart as cold as Jack Frost's butt and an ambition bordering on the psychotic.She makes her name among the mobsters by killing - in self defence - one of the top gangsters. This makes her attractive to the new gangster number one and she becomes his mistress - an affair to leads ultimately to dire consequences.

This is a rough and bloody and gripping story. But despite featuring two utterly grisly executions, The Faithless also has some very funny and gripping dialogue from a crime writer at the top of her game.

Martina Cole is the Queen of Crime Fiction. Her books are the most borrowed from prison libraries in the UK and the most nicked from British shops. This is not surprising as not only is her prose vivid and punchy but the dialogue is very real. Or so I'm told.

Cole writes of the badlands of Essex and the means streets of London's East End. She knows whereof she writes. She was born in a council Estate in Essex, her first ever boyfriend was a bankrobber (they stayed in touch for 15 years while he was banged up) and she was mates with legendary '60s gangster Eddie Richardson.

But Cole's family are Irish and Catholic with her mother from Dublin, her father from Cork and a granny who used to tell them bedtime stories about Fionn MacCumhaill and other Irish legends.

Cole is also a TV producer and has helped to put some of her best-sellers onto the small screen including The Take and Runaway. And she has no time for literary snobs. She told me about attending a writer's conference a few years backa nd being approached by a posh authoress. "She said to me, 'Martina I wouldn't want the people who read your books to read my books.' And I said: 'Well they won't because my readers like a good story!'"