Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman

 

🎶 Hollis, it's me, I'm Marchy,
I've come home, I'm so cold,
Let me torture this dog 🎶

There's a sketch on SNL called "Barbie Instagram" with Donald Glover, in which he plays a morbid intern who is convinced that Barbie is in the midst of an existential crisis after witnessing the death of one of her friends. While reading this book, I kept thinking about that sketch and picturing Alice Hoffman reading WUTHERING HEIGHTS and thinking, "There goes Cathy. Poor thing. She doesn't know she's a character in a Gothic romance written by a woman who died when she was thirty because she was living on corpse water out there in the misty moors."

I can see why so many people didn't like HERE ON EARTH. I guess if you're a die-hard fan of the original and see it as a love story, you're going to be pissed off when you read this and find out that not only did Alice Hoffman make the already unlikable cast of characters even more unlikable (and animal abusers, to boot!), she also reduced one of the most epic love stories of all time to a Lifetime-worthy saga of an abuser.

And okay, I'm not denying that Heathcliff was trash. But Hollis straight up beat his wife, Belinda, and then he turns on March just as soon as he's "won" and successfully had her leave her husband. Even worse, he's cruel to animals, and when he gets mad at March's daughter, Gwen, he goes out with a gun and threatens to shoot her horse and makes her beg him to spare the horse's life (spoiler: the horse lives, no thanks to him-- he was gonna make the fifteen year old beg and shoot the horse anyway). Not that the Cathy stand-in is much better. She's a dog abuser, locking this poor dog in her care in cold cars and pantries, just so she can sneak away and cheat on her husband by fucking Hollis. Also, the way she makes light of the possibility of Hollis being an abuser when her friend Susie comes to her out of concern is gross. I guess it's realistic, but gross. Fuck March.

So why am I giving this such a high rating? The writing was gorgeous, the New England setting was amazing, and the drama was top-tier. Did I care about any of these characters? No, not particularly, except for Gwen, the dog, and the horse. But was I here for the cheating, the cousin-fucking, and the adultery? Oh yeah. By the way, Gwen hooks up with Heathcliff's foster son who is actually her first cousin, so yeah. Cousin-fucking for the win. And nobody really makes a big deal of it or anything, although considering the other shit going down in Jenkinstown, maybe that's not a shock.

Read this for the drama and the magic realism that makes sex smell like smoke and fire. Don't read it for the authentic WUTHERING HEIGHTS vibes.

3.5 out of 5 stars