First off, all due honors to Alex Balk for spotting the horrible new Twilight-inspired cover art for Wuthering Heights and writing about it at The Awl. We confess, the intense horror of nightmare came upon us when we gazed upon that wretched, wretched cover, but, as a friend pointed out yesterday, that was only half the story… because what the British division of HarperCollins got so horribly, horribly wrong, the American division actually managed to get right.
Here’s the thing: If you’re going to imitate one of the most distinctive book cover themes of the last five years, you should at least do it accurately. What’s most wrong with the UK cover of Wuthering Heights is where it deviates from the Twilight model: ugly typeface, tiny ugly flower, and an ugly background that isn’t sheer black. Now look at the American version: The typefaces are sleeker, and the flower is properly sized and photographed in the same vaguely unsettling way. The American version even has the same taglines—”Bella and Edward’s Favorite Book” and “Love Never Dies”—as the British edition, but they look better here. (We still aren’t thrilled with the “Bella and Edward’s Favorite Book” badge, but it’s not as awful, at least.)
Of course, this doesn’t resolve the question of whether Wuthering Heights even needs what Balk calls “a fresh vampirey makeover.” But we’ll see what happens when American bookstores get the new edition later this season…