Solsbury Hill

February 3, 2014
Grand love affairs and friendly ghosts inhabit Wyler’s ambitious, Gothic-tinged debut. When New Yorker Eleanor Abbott is summoned to her Aunt Alice’s deathbed in Yorkshire, England, Eleanor is stunned to learn that she’s poised to inherit Trent Hall, her aunt’s sprawling country estate. The estate looks like it’s straight out of Wuthering Heights, complete with ghosts just like the ones who haunted Emily Brontë’s fictitious mansion, including a young woman in a long wool dress who begs Eleanor to find a bundle of letters hidden inside the house. When she finds the letters, Eleanor learns that the ghost is Brontë herself, who wrote part of her famous novel while living at Trent Hall. It’s soon clear that Wuthering Heights’s central theme of finding (and losing) a great love amid the moors was based on actual events. More than that, Brontë was not the last resident of Trent Hall who had to make Catherine Earnshaw’s famous choice between two men—and sooner than she suspects, Eleanor will be forced to make a similar choice herself. Although the Yorkshire setting is vividly drawn and its inhabitants satisfyingly complex, Wyler attempts to interweave so many stories with so many common elements that it’s difficult to feel truly connected to any of them, and using the ghosts as expository tools seems forced. More Brontë-style atmospheric gloom would have gone a long way.

March 15, 2014
" 'Tis wutherin' weather," comments the implausible manservant in Wyler's debut, giving the reader fair warning of this wispy, occasionally farcical reinterpretation of the Bronte family legend and classic. With its cover announcing "a novel of Wuthering Heights, " this offbeat, sometimes-surreal romance makes no secret of its intentions, especially when introducing its hero, Meadowscarp Macleod. "You know a meadow is a heath and a scarp is a cliff. Do you see?" asks Aunt Alice. But American clothes designer Eleanor Abbott doesn't immediately see, being preoccupied with ghosts; the heartbreaking unfaithfulness of her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend-since-schooldays, Miles; and the imminent death of Alice, whose passing means Trent Hall in Yorkshire will be Eleanor's. Her female ancestors are reputed to have a history/curse of making the wrong choice when deciding between two competing lovers. Could Eleanor herself be about to make a mistake, opting between leather-and-heather scented Meadowscarp and smooth Miles? Wyler's Yorkshire is a peculiarly unreal place, heavily detailed with furnishing fabrics--velvet and cashmere in particular--and where the locals speak a bizarre dialect. There is much striding on the moors. Not only does the ghost of Emily Bronte direct Eleanor to a cache of hidden letters contradicting literary scholarship by proving that the Victorian author knew all about passion, but Wyler goes a step further, granting her heroine a permanent place in the Bronte lineage, as well as enough self-knowledge to make the right choice. A preposterous but at moments oddly beguiling love story blessed with very good shabby-chic taste.

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March 15, 2014

Eleanor Abbot, an up-and-coming New York fashion designer, finds her comfortable life suddenly upended following news that her English aunt is dying and wishes to see her. Before she can make her flight, Eleanor first catches her childhood sweetheart cheating. It is thus with a confused and heavy heart that Eleanor finds herself on the windswept moors of Yorkshire in the very house and on the grounds that inspired the classic novel Wuthering Heights. With her aunt's death, Eleanor must come to terms with a surprise inheritance, family secrets, the intriguing ghost of Emily Bronte herself, and an even more intriguing man. Wyler's debut novel contains moments of languorous detail and plenty of windy, gothic walks on the moors that sadly lack emotional depth. For all the drama, Eleanor is no Catherine Earnshaw. Her vague reactions to seemingly urgent and emotional moments, and her dubious confusion over her dishonest boyfriend, make Eleanor a less than sympathetic heroine. The story has some good moments, but parallels between Eleanor's life and Emily Bronte's seem forced, and the love triangle cannot rival that of Catherine and Heathcliff. VERDICT This enjoyable read by an author worth watching nonetheless leaves the reader wishing there had been more.--Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA

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