J. R. Thorp
Auteur van Learwife
Werken van J. R. Thorp
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Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- Australia
- Korte biografie
- She won a Markievicz Award from the Irish Arts Council in 2021 and was one of The Observer's top 10 debut novelists of 2021. She was shortlisted for the BBC Opening Lines Prize, won the London Short Story Award in 2011, and has been published in the Cambridge Literary Review, Manchester Review, Wave Composition, and elsewhere. She wrote the libretto for the highly acclaimed modern opera Dear Marie Stopes and has had works commissioned by the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and St Paul’s Cathedral, amongst others.
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'Under the crack of this grief I feel myself slipping out into other forms: animal, vegetal, sea-spill foam, winter wind, a boar roaring blue in the dark. Then at least I would fit the tales: story-woman, death's head, corrupting flesh at the touch. Oh, I know them, every ghost has good ears.'
This is a beautifully written and powerful imagining of the wife of King Lear, who merits only a passing mention in Shakespeare's play. Opening as the news of the death of her husband and three daughters reaches her at the convent where she has been in exile for years, the book explores the grief and shock of her new situation. The book is written in the first-person, present tense, which gives the book an immediacy and a very deep personal resonance. As she is about to leave, an outbreak of the plague shuts the convent down and the queen's personal life slowly starts to mirror that of her late husband.
And yet... For me, despite the sheer talent that J.R. Thorp exhibits, there is a sense of over-writing here. There is too much repetition and, well, 'wordiness'. She keeps writing about leaving the convent - frankly if she had just done it then she would have got out before the plague outbreak! One newspaper critic, in their review, called it the self-indulgence of a debut novel which desperately needed a good editor. I 100% agree. For all the linguistic and emotional power, the book needed to be shorter to pack the proper punch, and it probably didn't need to over-use the motifs and themes of the original play quite so much - which is why I come in at only 3 stars. I do, however, very much look forward to seeing what's next for the author.… (meer)
This is a beautifully written and powerful imagining of the wife of King Lear, who merits only a passing mention in Shakespeare's play. Opening as the news of the death of her husband and three daughters reaches her at the convent where she has been in exile for years, the book explores the grief and shock of her new situation. The book is written in the first-person, present tense, which gives the book an immediacy and a very deep personal resonance. As she is about to leave, an outbreak of the plague shuts the convent down and the queen's personal life slowly starts to mirror that of her late husband.
And yet... For me, despite the sheer talent that J.R. Thorp exhibits, there is a sense of over-writing here. There is too much repetition and, well, 'wordiness'. She keeps writing about leaving the convent - frankly if she had just done it then she would have got out before the plague outbreak! One newspaper critic, in their review, called it the self-indulgence of a debut novel which desperately needed a good editor. I 100% agree. For all the linguistic and emotional power, the book needed to be shorter to pack the proper punch, and it probably didn't need to over-use the motifs and themes of the original play quite so much - which is why I come in at only 3 stars. I do, however, very much look forward to seeing what's next for the author.… (meer)
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Alan.M | 2 andere besprekingen | Nov 22, 2021 |
Alan.M | 2 andere besprekingen | Nov 22, 2021 | The story ends with the death of King Lear and his daughters, a tragedy, yet one member of the family is still alive, Lear's wife, imprisoned in an abbey for fifteen years. She no longer knows her own name but the Queen is still a queen and holds power as the abbey is quarantined and the old abbess dies. Still manipulative she muses on her past and the reasons why she was forsaken whilst plotting her escape.
This is an absolutely brilliant book. It takes the Shakespearean tale of King Lear and offers a side-story which is completely wonderful. The Queen is an unlikable character yet as she descends into senility her story is complete. The writing is complex but intelligible, the plot clear yet wonderfully developed and poetic cadence works so well.… (meer)
This is an absolutely brilliant book. It takes the Shakespearean tale of King Lear and offers a side-story which is completely wonderful. The Queen is an unlikable character yet as she descends into senility her story is complete. The writing is complex but intelligible, the plot clear yet wonderfully developed and poetic cadence works so well.… (meer)
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 1
- Leden
- 93
- Populariteit
- #200,859
- Waardering
- 3.5
- Besprekingen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 14
If you know the story of King Lear, you know that he has three marriageable daughters at the beginning of the play, yet their mother is mentioned only twice indirectly in the play. When Lear has been rebuffed by his eldest daughter Goneril, he goes to Regan's house. She says that she is glad to see him, and he replies:
Regan, I think you are; I know what reason
I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,
I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb,
Sepulchring an adult’ress.
In the second instance, Lear states that Goneril's unkindness must be proof that she is a bastard. Much has been made by scholars over the fate of the missing wife and mother. J R Thorpe chooses to give her a fate: banishment to a convent for an unknown "crime" that is never stated. As the story begins, she has learned of the deaths of Lear, Cordelia, Goneril and Regan, and she launches into a monologue addressed to the reader. In it, she covers the happy days of her early marriage, her changing relationships with her daughters, her friendship with Kent, her life in the convent. The problem is that on audio, it all sounds the same: like a complaint seething with anger. One note, both vocally and emotionally, gets pretty monotonous. I just could not stick with it for very long. Additionally, it made me unsympathetic to the character and really uninterested in her fate. If I had to listen to that harpy all day long, I'd want to lock her up, too! So I'll admit that I ended up "listening" to the book but not really listening to it; I turned it on while doing other things on the computer. I probably missed a lot of good stuff, but I just couldn't help it. At some point, I may pick this one up in print or on ebook (but probably not as there are too many good books waiting on my shelf). Two shaky stars for the concept and for Stevenson's efforts.
(A side note on audiobooks: I that find I prefer to create the voices of characters in my own mind from what I have read. It's getting harder and harder for a reader to please me; so often they are "performing" a character rather than BEING one. And the wrong voice can ruin a book for me. Lately I've been sticking to nonfiction on audio--biographies and memoirs, histories, politics, etc. The reader doesn't matter quite so much in those situations.)… (meer)