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Welcome to Maiko Lenting-Lu’s neverending supply of books. Image by Archi Banal.
Welcome to Maiko Lenting-Lu’s neverending supply of books. Image by Archi Banal.

BooksSeptember 25, 2024

Reading into the future: publisher Maiko Lenting-Lu’s books confessional

Welcome to Maiko Lenting-Lu’s neverending supply of books. Image by Archi Banal.
Welcome to Maiko Lenting-Lu’s neverending supply of books. Image by Archi Banal.

Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Maiko Lenting-Lu, product manager at Hachette NZ. 

Weirdest question you’ve ever been asked at work

My two favourite phone calls to the office have both been about maps. The first was someone who was lost in the South Island who called us (the publisher of the map) to complain that there were roads that weren’t in the book. I asked for the ISBN, looked it up and discovered the book was rather old, and then found myself trying to help direct this man without having a clue where he was. He found his way … eventually. The second was a query about ordering a road map of the UK, not for a physical trip to the UK, but as a guide to the streets that were mentioned in this couple’s favourite crime TV series.

Funniest thing you’ve overheard in the office

Every one of us has a story where you’ve told someone that you work in publishing and immediately (and I mean immediately) the person you are talking to pitches you a book. My most memorable was someone pitching a guide to grieving a pet. It came with a rather long story of how their own pet had just passed away.

Best thing about being a publisher

The genuinely endless supply of books. I’ve been in publishing for 10 years and have never been without something to read. I also still feel a burst of joy whenever I open a box containing new books. You know you’re in the right place when you can’t help but run your hand over foil and cover finishes in a reverent fashion.

‘Love The Spinoff? Its future depends on your support. Become a member today.’
Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

Worst thing about being a publisher

Telling friends that I’m reading a book that is SO good, but they can’t read it for another six months. OK, sorry, that’s a real humble brag. But, it is also a problem because you’re always reading into the future and it’s hard to get to all the books that are out now as well as read ahead.

What you’d recommend to someone seeking escapism

I’ve gone on a real romance journey recently, so if you’re looking for saucy escapism then pick up a Christina Lauren (preferably Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating), or the less saucy option is David Nicholls’ You Are Here, which is about two content-but-lost souls talking to one another as they walk across the Lake District in England. Nicholls is one of the best at dialogue and this one is just beautiful.

What you’d recommend to someone looking for comedy

Look no further than the hilarious and super fun Miles and Jones: Anaconda Attack by Sam Smith. It’s a graphic novel for upper primary school kids (and anyone who is still a kid at heart). I would also recommend Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe which is an absolutely mad book about a single mum starting an OnlyFans to make money to raise her kid. It’s brilliant, whip-smart and utterly hilarious.

From left to right: a book Maiko Lenting-Lu would suggest for those needing some comedy; a book she’d suggest for an Aotearoa read; and the book she wishes she’d written.

What you’d recommend to someone looking for an Aotearoa read

Definitely pick up Airana Ngarewa’s The Bone Tree or Pātea Boys. I would also recommend Shilo Kino’s All That We Know. I’d also say they’re in luck because New Zealand’s writers are an incredibly talented bunch!

What you’d recommend to someone who hardly ever reads

I would suggest getting into audiobooks: you can read as you walk or vacuum or do the dishes! If you find podcasts a bit too overwhelming because there are hundreds of episodes out already, then go for an audiobook. If regular paperbacks are more your thing, then try Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and escape into a world of danger and dragons. It’ll capture you on the first page!

The book I wish I’d written

Ooof, I am in awe of anyone who can write a book – not an easy feat! Much easier to read all that person’s hard work (and heart and soul). I wish I could write something as effortlessly brilliant as Emily St John Mandel’s The Sea of Tranquility

Everyone should read

The Beach by Alex Garland. It’s a really, really good book. I feel it’s been forgotten as a book due to the Leonardo DiCaprio movie which feels wrong! Go find it! Go read it! The audiobook is read by Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy) and is super compelling. 

The book I want to be buried with

Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet. I re-read it every year and now I see it is having a resurgence. It will be the book I buy for all my friends’ kids when they hit nine or 10.

The first book I remember reading by myself

I don’t remember the first one I read by myself, but I very clearly remember choosing to read Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (only because it had a polar bear on it). It became one of my favourites (still is), and I remember arguing with my siblings who said it was boring. They’re boring. The book is brilliant.

The book I wish I’d never read

The Neverending Story was recommended to me by a family friend and though I finished it, it was the book that taught me that it’s OK not to finish things you aren’t enjoying. One third is brilliant, the other two thirds are … there.  

From left to right: one of the four books (in a series) that Maiko Lenting-Lu would be buried with; the book she wishes she hadn’t read; and the forthcoming novel she’s currently reading.

Dystopia or utopia

Dystopia. Though I have found a new love of romance books, my heart remains with the darker, more messed-up books. 

Fiction or nonfiction

Fiction. I find my mind wandering with nonfiction, though listening to audiobooks has helped immensely with this. There’s nothing quite like listening to a memoir voiced by the author themselves.

The book I never admit I’ve read

Oh, I don’t stand for this – never feel guilty about what you read! I was once reading at the pub waiting for a friend and the waiter saw me reading. He told me he was reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace whilst I was reading book one in one of Nora Roberts’ magical trilogies with a witch, mermaid, werewolf and time traveller taking on an evil goddess in the Greek Islands. We may not have had much to say to one another after this … Nora writes a great book though so – his loss!

What are you reading right now

I’m reading into 2025 with an utterly amazing book called The Names by Florence Knapp. It’s told in three arcs, with each arc following the same family, centring on the son and the name that his mother has given him: Bear, Julian or Gordon, depending on the arc. It is a book about choices and consequences and is an absolute stunner.

Keep going!
Emerald Fennell not reading Wuthering Heights. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, named as stars of Fennell’s film adaptation.
Emerald Fennell not reading Wuthering Heights. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, named as stars of Fennell’s film adaptation.

BooksSeptember 25, 2024

Dear Emerald Fennell, please don’t Saltburnify Wuthering Heights

Emerald Fennell not reading Wuthering Heights. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, named as stars of Fennell’s film adaptation.
Emerald Fennell not reading Wuthering Heights. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, named as stars of Fennell’s film adaptation.

Welcome, friends, to the inaugural meeting of the Support Group for Concerned Citizens Against the Saltburning of Wuthering Heights. 

It has been brought to our attention that one Emerald Fennell, the writer and director of that embarrassingly over-hyped movie about the wee Irish actor from The Banshees of Inisherin fucking a freshly dug and populated grave, has set her sights on a film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. What’s more, actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have been announced as the lead characters of Catherine and Heathcliff. 

First, some reactions on this casting news gathered from within the group: 

“Hard pass from me”
“Did she [Fennell] read the book?”
“This is a mistake of gargantuan proportions”
“Elordi is not Heathcliff. So, no”
“No.”
“Hell no.”

A scan of our initial concerns can be summarised as: the boy Elordi – handsome as he may have been in Saltburn – is no Heathcliff. And as much as Margot Robbie appears to be able to turn her talents to any character, without a decent Heathcliff there is no Cathy. Wuthering Heights is about the pain and brutality of loving what you fear and fearing what you love, all conveyed in Emily Brontë’s startling, poetic prose. Elordi and Robbie simply do not read as brutish, muddy, and crazed purveyors of the best and worst of human nature. Too polished, too Hollywood, too Saltburn. 

But though we may be twitchy about the casting, this dispatch is really to convey the far greater fear that Fennell is going to Saltburnify one of the greatest, most gloriously batshit, gothic masterpieces to ever haunt the Yorkshire moors. Wuthering Heights deserves the very best and we’re afraid Fennell has not proven that she is such (an example of the very best being of course the Emma Thompson (screenplay) and Ang Lee (Director) collaboration that produced the 1995 film adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which is perfect). It has been reported that Fennell is down to write, produce and direct Wuthering Heights and this group considers this trifecta to be a huge mistake.

Should Fennell be let anywhere near any Brontë is the question.

Elordi in Saltburn. Fine, whatever. Not Heathcliff.

Members of this group loathed Saltburn with the fire of a thousand suns. I can hardly describe the despair that came upon me in the final scenes of that film, it is unutterable! But my disdain in general can be wrangled into the following list of the film’s major flaws:

  1. Weak plot. The script felt like maybe a third draft. We needed the twentieth. We did not need to be walked through exactly how all the murdering happened, it was incredibly obvious. 
  2. Poor character development. Did anyone actually care when anyone died? No. Because the characters were dully drawn at best, unimaginative and uncared for at worst. 
  3. Confused references: the mashup of The Talented Mr Ripley, Agatha Christie, Midsomer Murders, and Cruel Intentions didn’t gel. The plot had none of the satisfying backbone of Christie or Highsmith or Horowitz. The collision resulted in the distinct tang of aesthetics over style. It wasn’t gothic enough to be gothic or thrilling enough to be a thriller.
  4. Waste of Carey Mulligan.
  5. Crimes against Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s banger ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ which will now forever be associated with the silly and bad ending of a floppy film. 

I went into Saltburn with a partially open heart. I wanted to like it more than Promising Young Woman, which I had mildly appreciated. But Fennell took my heart and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. An attempt to analyse why Saltburn riled me so completely finds that deep down I know it could have been so much better. And also that this one film got in the way of probably 1,000 far more accomplished scripts languishing because their writers don’t have the social or financial capital that Fennell has access to. For balance I will force myself to say that Saltburn did reveal flashes of … not quite brilliance but at least excellence: Carey Mulligan as the vapid friend at the mercy of Rosamund Pike’s turn as so-rich-she’s-cooked lady of the manor; Richard E Grant shone as the hopeless, skewered, grief-stricken lord of the manor. 

But Elordi? The only interesting thing about him in Saltburn was his eyebrow piercing. He’s going to need to unveil a hell of a lot more charisma if he wants to do justice to one of the great chaotic, love demons in all of art. Heathcliff is weather. Unsettling and mesmerising and magnetic. He is the wicked, wild slip that was eroded out of Catherine thanks to class and gender expectations. Also, Heathcliff says shit like this: “You teach me now how cruel you’ve been – cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you – they’ll damn you. […] Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’

This passage may offer a clue, I suppose, to why Fennell is compelled to make the 23rd film adaptation of Wuthering Heights. She does seem to enjoy a character that loves to the grave and beyond. And look, who among us doesn’t understand the compulsion? Wuthering Heights is a cult book for freaks and normies alike. Who among us hasn’t wanted to flail about the moors all hopeless about the division between our hearts and our minds

And yet we, The Anti-Saltburning Society, have grave doubts. Wuthering Heights has spawned a vast array of artistic spinoffs, most of them shadows of the founding story. Kate Bush’s perfect song and subsequent fan-made mass dance mobs are an exception. Which leads us directly to the elephant in the room: the panic-inducing suspicion that Fennell might use Kate’s song in the film? I fear this is inevitable. We know Fennell loves pop music. And we know she’s not super fussed about historical accuracy. We also know that Cruel Intentions, one of the inspirations for Saltburn, is a retelling of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. And while we’re here, what if Fennell leans so far into her late 90s x early 2000s influences that she produces a Frankenstein’s monster of Wuthering Heights meets She’s All That meets Britney Spears’ music video for the 2003 hit, Toxic? 

And yet. If Fennell does want to do Wuthering Heights then perhaps we should hope that it is precisely that kind of translation that she makes – an ahistoric retelling over an attempt at a faithful, historically and textually accurate adaptation. Perhaps we ought to hope that Fennell tugs this gothic classic so far out of context that we can only see the vaguest of Brontë pencil marks underneath. It worked for 10 Things I Hate About You, and it worked for Clueless. It definitely worked for Cruel Intentions. 

Cruel Intentions (1999): a successful riff on a novel from 1782.

The question remains, however: does this adaptation even need to happen at all? I’ve counted over 20 film adaptations of Wuthering Heights made between 1948 and 2015. And that’s not including 2022’s Emily Brontë biopic, Emily, starring Sex Education’s Emma Mackey (which was OK: Mackey was compelling, and the story managed to weave a lot of Brontë theories, but it made a ludicrous mistake with a silly out-of-character secret sex romp with a tutor which would have been better left as simmering but unrequited desire). 

Ultimately I put forward a motion that we beg Fennell to leave off. We’ve had Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, we’ve had Juliette Binoche as Cathy. Can we please just leave it there?

All those in favour say, “Haunt me, then!” 

Items of business for our next meeting: thoughts/fears/prayers for Baz Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

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