Review: The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson OBE

Review: The Gap of Time

Jeanette Winterson

Hogarth Shakespeare

2015

Another of the novelized retelling of a Shakespear's work from Hogarth. This one comes from The Winter’s Tale in which Shakespeare depicted jealousy with its attendant emotions and consequences. It’s been called a tragicomedy i.e. bad stuff happens, but it still ends happy. The audiences then as now did not like unhappy, the bad guy wins endings. Justice and repentance must prevail. And it does. That’s a spoiler, but one that should be no surprise.

Winterson worked her novelized version from the interior of the jealous husband’s mind. She does that portrayal well. The guy is disgusting and deserves to come to a bad end. He doesn’t though, just as Shakespeare wrote his play. Now comes the part Shakespeare did not do. The language the author chose to use throughout a large portion of this work is as crass as it can get. I found it offensive and unnecessary. The story would work, and did work before, without all that.

So after skimming to the end of the book and finding more of the same I put it down for the most part. The author did stay true to the Shakespearian plot is the best I can say about this work. Read Shakespeare if you want to see how the story unfolded. This book was not for me.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a review.

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