Everyone loves a great story, stories like The Great Gatsby, it even has great in the title, Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontes Catherine Earnshaw reimagined by Emerald Fennel into a tale of erotic feminism and fantasy, and her sister Charlotte’s heroine Jane Eyre, a story that has endured I think because everyone can connect with the brutality and cruelty that drives Jane and hardens her with steely determination. Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd with the driven protagonist Bathsheba Evendeen determined to be bigger and better than the men in a world not designed for the gentile to succeed or Jane Austin’s comedic tale Emma where Emma Woodhouse uses her charm and sometimes cunning to her own end and the more realistic look at the plight of women in the 19th century in Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, stories that continue to be retold.
All these stories have a common thread in their timeless ability to reveal and connect. Showing the light and shade of the lives of the characters, the emotions and struggles that connect us all when the author exposes the inner workings of character rarely revealed in everyday life.
A really good book for me takes you on a journey, connects you with the protagonist, shows you an unimaginable truth inside the trials and tribulations of their life, which is in effect your life, whatever the date and time within which the story is set.
Many books have tackled the plight of women, usually set within some kind of love story, we humans like that, we women especially relate it to hope and beauty, often foolishly. Most great stories expose the brutality of life, the real inate differences between men and women but there are few books I have read that give both women and men an insight into these distinct differences which are actually unchanging from Victorian drama to modern testimony which leave women on the losing side in society regarding status and earning potential more times than not.
Growing up in Yorkshire I connected with the Brontë sisters, I visited Haworth a lot close to my childhood home and like most people studied these classic works of English literature in school.
In my teens, an avid reader I became engrossed in the work of another woman from Yorkshire Barbara Taylor Bradford and her counterpart from The North East Catherine Cookson.
The female protagonists in these fictional best sellers reminded me of the black and white movie stars of the 1930s and 40s Hollywood I was yet to meet in Joan Crawford and Bette Davies.
My book club was lucky enough to get pre release copies of this title and I feel honoured to be one of the first people to ever read it. Imagine if JK Rowling had let you take a peak at Harry Potter before becoming a global phenomenon.
Waterfall Down is a feminist manual of our time, a true story that will empower men, probably make them cringe in it’s expose of one woman’s early plight and subsequent fight for financial success against all the odds managing, manipulating and using sex appeal wisely, her most potent weapon for ascension and getting what she wanted first and foremost.
For women the story is an education, a shift in mindset, a big reveal, that shows undeniably paying is power, and earning potential is quietly hampered for women even in the post women’s lib, burn our bras, free sex, feminist era.
When we are sick of things the way they are, for women and men this tale told over seven decades will connect you, then strip you bear and make you feel in the way a classic work of modern literature is able to do. It’s not about the writing style, that’s not fancy, it’s about the guts of the story about a dream and achieving the impossible. A story that makes us watch a film or pick up a book and turn the pages continuously right until the very end.
Only a reader understands that feeling when you turn the last page and you are so full of emotion stirred amongst the pages you feel like you need a holiday with another amazing read.