Catherine

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 19 NOV. 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 prot g 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 Bront , is melodramatic and abrupt. Ages 15 up.