Shakespeare's story of loss and redemption, retold by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE has written 10 novels, children s books, non-fiction and screenplays, and writes regularly for the Guardian. She was adopted by Pentecostal parents and raised in Manchester to be a missionary, which she wrote about in her first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and twenty-seven years later in her bestselling memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? The Winter s Tale tells the story of Perdita, the abandoned child. All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around. I have worked with The Winter s Tale in many disguises for many years, Jeanette says of the play. The result is The Gap of Time, her cover version.
"She makes us read on, our hearts in our mouths, to see how a
twice-told story will turn out this time"
*Publishers Weekly*
"The intricacy with which Winterson has plotted her novel against
each Shakespearean detail will delight readers familiar with the
original … it’s part of a vision of a world in which past, present,
and future are lived simultaneously, original and adaptation
existing in the same moment."
*The Times*
"A book of considerable beauty… Winterson’s fiction is a fine
invitation into this deeply Shakespearean vision of imagination as
the best kind of truth-telling"
*New Statesman*
"Winterson’s stage, like that of Shakespeare, is filled with
wonders"
*Times Literary Supplement*
"Winterson is faithful to both the narrative and the spirit of the
play, while transposing it to an utterly different and modern
setting… There is lightness here, in the frisky prose and the
author’s delight in invention, but you are never free of the
awareness of dark shadows where danger and corruption lie in
wait."
*Scotsman*
"Clever and beautiful...it soars"
*Financial Times*
"A deeply felt, emotionally intelligent and serious novel, which
resists easy answers and yet expresses the hope that human beings
can muddle through, and that bad pasts can have good outcomes...
Pulsates with such authenticity and imaginative generosity that I
defy you not to engage with it."
*Independent*
"The Winter’s Tale, one of the late, 'problem' plays, is about
loss, remorse and forgiveness, and the nature of time. Winterson
has captured all this with respect and affection for Shakespeare’s
text, and made it new with her own bold and poetic prose and her
insights into love and grief. There are passages here so concisely
beautiful they give you goosebumps."
*Radar*
"Emotionally wrought and profoundly intelligent it will pull you
into its troubled, wise world of jealousy, paranoia, grief, revenge
and forgiveness in some of the most stunning prose you’ll read this
year … Winterson masterfully interweaves layers of narrative and
themes so that reading the novel is like listening to a Bach
prelude and fugue … A supremely clever, compelling and emotionally
affecting novel that deserves multiple readings to appreciate its
many layers."
*Mail on Sunday*
"Engrossing, almost soapily addictive"
*Independent*
"The book is the first of a major new series, in which well-known
novelists give Shakespeare a modern twist, and Winterson rises to
the challenge with some ingenious touches."
*Mail on Sunday*
"Astonishing."
*Elle*
"Smart and witty... Compelling, entertaining and elegant"
*Guardian*
"Moving, pacy... A clever book that explores themes of love, loss
and forgiveness as parents screw up their children and do the
unthinkable. A thrilling read."
*Irish News*
"There are passages here so concisely beautiful they give you
goosebumps"
*Observer*
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