Just over the border, in the sleepy post-revolutionary Mexican town of Corazón de la Fuente, the erection of a mammoth radio tower will soon transform the lives of everyone living under its green-hazed penumbra. Dr Brinkley, the tower’s progenitor, is a million watt charlatan and his heavy brand of hucksterism and patent medicine, pitched to address men’s greatest fear, is wildly successful. But with so much potency on the loose, is it any wonder the citizenry of Corazón de la Fuente end up being shown the business end of his tower?

Robert Hough’s gentle, descriptive prose traces the hopes and fears of a wide selection of Corazón de la Fuente’s favourite sons and daughters in near-sepia tones. From the lame mayor, Miguel Orozco, to the Spanish hacendero, Antonio Garcia, to Madam Félix and the Marias of the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, Hough treats his subjects with compassion and just enough self-awareness to keep them interesting. But perhaps my favourite of the many citizens of Corazón de la Fuente is the aged molinero, Roberto Pántelas, and his young love, Laura Valesquez. Their sad story, tragic but humane, captivates the reader. How could their end signal anything other than the downfall of Corazón de la Fuente?

Of course Corazón de la Fuente does not go down without a fight. The elder statesmen of the town, together with the young Francisco Ramirez, and the ancient curandera who foretold the malignant effect the tower would have, take it in hand to set things right. But perhaps too much has happened and too much has changed by then.

This is fine writing by an author clearly in command of his craft. A pleasure to read and to recommend.

Writers write, as they say. That is about the only certain advice one can receive from a book on writing and life and the writing life. With a wry, self-deprecating, brutally honest demeanour, Anne Lamott informs her students that the way to become a writer is to sit down every day at the same time with a clean piece of paper or the file on your computer you’ve been slaving over for more than a year—and write. Only those who have actually attempted this will appreciate, along with Lamott, just how difficult it may be to fulfil that simple injunction. She is well aware that you will stare at the page or the screen sometimes for hours on end; that you will reconsider your decision to post-pone the fun you could have had working on your taxes; that the corner of your desk will become endlessly fascinating and just may be the grain of sand in which you will perceive the whole…yes, just about anything is more enticing, at times, than writing.

This book shares a few useful techniques to help your writing process, which I’ll get to in a moment, but what makes it one of the best books on writing that I have read is Lamott’s compassion for others in her situation. Because more than anything else, this is a book about compassion. Compassion for others, certainly, but also compassion for oneself. That, and learning the value of producing an SFD: a “shitty first draft”.

Lamott has a strong belief in the power of writing per se. If you press on, word after damn word, reaching a certain number of words per day (she suggests three hundred as a target), eventually you will complete your SFD. And here is an important tip: don’t show your SFD to anyone. The embarrassment of riches (and the stink) of an SFD should be yours alone. Fortunately, once you’ve got an SFD you can move on to the rewriting stage—because having made something, your job as a writer is to make it better. Of course making it better can take a long time. It may involve sharing your current versions with your writing group, with a trusted but critical colleague, with an editor or your agent, if you have one. The good news is that no matter how bad they think your writing is or how much further you’ve got to go with it, at least you can rest easy that they didn’t see your SFD.

By all means borrow this book from your local public library. And when you’ve finished reading it, go out and find it in a bookshop somewhere. Because you’ll want to have it on the shelf in your office to glance at when you are staring at that blank page (or screen) to remind you that, well, writers write. (P.S. If you think this review is bad, you should have seen my SFD.) Recommended.

The characters in Emily Brontë’s novel are so extreme, so given over to their passions, so driven and wilful that you will, certainly, want to pull your own hair out. From the dissipated yet cruel Hindley, to the emotionally divided and divisive Cathy, to the mindlessly foolish Isabella, and her ineffectual brother, Edgar, to the stunted, brutish Hareton, it is a cavalcade of distasteful, even monstrous, types. But none compare to the fiendish Heathcliff himself, whose unrelenting vengeful monomania brings ruin upon them all. How Heathcliff’s perverse passion for Catherine came to represent any sort of ideal of romantic devotion in the many years subsequent to the novel’s publication is a mystery to me.

If possible, it might be best to set aside the principal characters and their extreme emotions and actions, and turn instead to the descriptive prose with which Emily Brontë renders the wild moors, the relentless inclement weather, and the brief wonder of spring or a sunny summer day. Even more intriguing is the bracketed narrative technique, initiated by the loquaciously risible Mr. Lockwood and then, more prosaically, carried forward by Ellen Dean. That Ellen Dean at one point encourages Mr. Lockwood to pursue a possible marriage with the younger Catherine deliciously risks the confusion of narrative and plot, and Mr. Lockwood does well to get himself as far away from Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights as possible. His return later in the year rightly heralds the wrapping up of loose ends and the natural dénouement of the tale.

Wuthering Heights, even today, seems so singular, so extreme that, if you still have hair at the end of it, you might wish to set it on its own shelf in your library, isolated and incomparable. A curious, dark masterpiece recommended only for the brave of heart.