What a truly amazing book. Written by a woman with so little interaction with the outside world, in her isolation on the moors of Yorkshire, and yet so very, very full of passion and desire and need and darkness. The story begins not at the beginning, but many years later at Wuthering Heights, where a new tenant stays the night to wait out the storm and hears the tapping at the window from Cathy. Cathy was the childhood friend and beloved of Heathcliff, a young gypsy boy found on the streets of Liverpool by the Earnshaw's kind father. Cathy's love for Heathcliff is twisted by her brother by his hatred of Heathcliff, and as soon as their father dies Hindley sends Heathcliff to the stables and servants' quarters.

Cathy is taken in by a neighboring well-to-do family, where she is treated less like a young girl of the moors and more like a lady. When she becomes engaged to Edgar Linton, she and Heathcliff begin their separate and tragic paths through life that scar the next generation.

The narrative of the book is told by Ellen, Cathy's nurse, who has outlived the first generation of characters (Cathy, Heathcliff, Edgar, and their siblings) and is keeping an eye on the second (Catherine and Hareton). The second shares the blood of the first, but fortunately for their future, the passions are diluted enough to allow for some choice with their lives. ( )