Catherine

November 19, 2012
Digging through old boxes one bored day in the ’burbs, 17-year-old Chelsea discovers that the mother she thought was dead actually disappeared when Chelsea was three. Immediately, Chelsea hops a bus to New York City and starts looking for more information. Told in two voices 20 years apart—those of Chelsea in the present and her mother, Catherine, when she was herself 17—the book updates Wuthering Heights with a downtown New York City rock club (think CBGB) standing in for the Yorkshire moors. Lindner, whose Jane was a modernized retelling of Jane Eyre, capably streamlines the complex, gothic plot twists of the original as she depicts the passionate but ill-fated love between Catherine and Heathcliff stand-in Hence, a rock ragamuffin taken in by Catherine’s club owner father. Unfortunately, Chelsea is fairly generic, and her romance with another young rocker (Hence’s protégé and heir) comes across as plot-driven, not organic. The climax at the gun-stocked home of Catherine’s angry brother, though clearly meant as a cleansing explosion of love and violence worthy of Emily Brontë, is melodramatic and abrupt. Ages 15–up. Agent: Amy Williams, McCormick & Williams Literary Agency.

December 15, 2012
After discovering that her mother, Catherine Eversole Price, had not died, as her father told her, but instead deserted the family and then disappeared, 17-year-old Chelsea Price goes on a quest to find out what happened to her. The narrative, a loose-limbed take on Wuthering Heights, is told in the alternating, first-person voices of daughter and mother. However, the emotional heart of the story belongs to Catherine, who as a senior in high school, was a young woman torn between an all-encompassing love for musician Hence and a desire to pursue her own ambitions. The story is set in motion when Chelsea unearths a 14-year-old letter from her mother. The return address leads her to Manhattan's Lower East Side and a legendary rock club called The Underground. There she meets the adult Hence, now the club's owner. Hence is a furious exposed nerve of a man, but surprisingly, he shows, if not a soft spot, then at least a less-hard one toward Chelsea, who greatly resembles her mother. The strands of mother's and daughter's stories come together during the suspenseful climax, when Chelsea discovers what actually happened to Catherine and gains a measure of peace and maturity. Not as emotionally engaging as readers might desire, but solid and well-told. (Fiction. 15 & up)

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February 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-As she did in Jane (Little, Brown, 2010), Linder updates another gothic romance, this time Wuthering Heights. Catherine, the daughter of a punk rock club owner in Manhattan, is true rock music royalty. Her teenage daughter, Chelsea, has grown up in small-town Massachusetts thinking her mother died when Chelsea was three. She discovers that Catherine actually left her and her father to go back to New York City, so Chelsea sets off to see if the woman is still alive. Lindner alternates between Catherine's and Chelsea's narration. Catherine's tale (told when she herself is a teen) moves at a quicker pace and is all sweeping emotion and histrionics about how she fell in love fast and hard with Hence, a rising rock star who worked at her dad's club, The Underground. Chelsea's story (which takes place 20 years later) is more measured as she seeks to unravel the mystery of her mother's past. The sense of time is a bit skewed, but teens will no doubt forgive these blemishes as they are caught up in the drama of true love never dying. Catherine and her husband tend toward stereotypes (the perfect woman, the milquetoast professor), but Chelsea and Hence, whom Chelsea meets when she goes to The Underground looking for clues about her mother, both learn and grow as the tale is told. Catherine is as tragic, emo, and over-the-top as the novel that inspired it. Romance fans will eat it up.-Geri Diorio, Ridgefield Library, CT

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
Grades 9-12 Pulling threads from the classic Wuthering Heights, Lindner (who previously took on Jane Eyre) crafts a story of mad love and moves the stage from the Yorkshire moors to New York's punk scene. Seventeen-year-old Chelsea learns through a hidden letter that her mother did not die when she was three, but ran away to New York. Chelsea does the same to try to rediscover Catherine and see if she is still alive. Chelsea finds the legendary nightclub, the Underground, where Catherine grew up. Living there is the current owner, Hence, a once-talented musician shattered by Catherine's marriage to Chelsea's father. The story is told in alternating chapters by Chelsea and, through her journal, Catherine. Although the voices don't sound terribly different, the dramatic events touched by love, loss, and longing have all the juicy elements readers will appreciate. While it's best not to look too closely at some of the details (Chelsea's father probably could have found her if he looked hard enough), this does have some of the sweep of the original and certainlyespecially in Hencecaptures the agony of love gone wrong.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)