Sel pikal ajal. Ümber jutustatud "Talvemuinasjutt"

Hogarth Shakespeare

by Jeanette Winterson, Mihkel Mõisnik (Translator)

Uus-Böömimaa. Ameerika. Torm. Must mees leiab ühel ööl valge maha jäetud beebi. Mees võtab tüdruku – kerge nagu tähe – ja otsustab ta koju viia.

London. Inglismaa. Pärast börsikrahhi. Leo Kaiser oskab küll raha teha, ent ta ei oska taltsutada seda keevat armukadedust, mida ta oma parima sõbra ja oma naise vastu tunneb. Kas ta vastsündinud laps on üldse tema oma?

Uus-Böömimaa. Seitseteist aastat hiljem. Poiss ja tüdruk armuvad, aga kumbki neist ei tea paljutki sellest, kes nad on ja kust tulevad.

Jeanette Wintersoni uues versioonis Shakespeare’i „Talvemuinasjutust” on küll tunda originaali kaja, aga lugu ise on täiesti nüüdisaegne. Selles kõrgete panustega mängus, mis võib lõppeda nii tragöödia kui ka andestusega, on tähtis roll Ajal. Varem või hiljem leitakse kaotatu alati üles.

„Sel pikal ajal” ilmub Hogarth Shakespeare’i sarjas. Sarja raamatute autoriteks on meie aja tuntud kirjanikud, teiste seas Margaret Atwood, Gillian Flynn, Howard Jacobson, kes on oma romaani aluseks võtnud mõne südamelähedase Shakespeare’i näidendi. „Meil kõigil on mõni talismaniks muutunud tekst, mida endaga kaasas kanname ja mis omakorda meid kaasas kannab. Olen „Talvemuinasjutuga” töötanud erinevate maskeeringute varjus juba palju aastaid,” tutvustab Winterson oma valikut. „Sel pikal ajal“ on sarja esimene raamat.

Genres: Fiction, Shakespeare, Retellings, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Fantasy

252 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2015

About the author

Novelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing provides the background to her acclaimed first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. She graduated from St Catherine's College, Oxford, and moved to London where she worked as an assistant editor at Pandora Press.

One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.

She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.

Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

To open a Winterson novel is to open your very own gap in time where hours can vanish into the flip of a page, where ideas stretch out like luminous clouds over landscapes of prose and love buds from the branches of thought arching over the horizon. It is my favorite place to be. Here, however, The Gap of Time is Jeanette Winterson’s retelling—or ‘cover version’ as she puts it—of William Shakespeare’s 1623 play The Winter’s Tale, transporting the narrative to a modern stage in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But in this brave new world where Kings are now hedge fund managers or video game developers and Queens have wikipedia pages and imdb credits the heart of forgiveness and still shines through this story of lost-and-found. As heartwarming as it is humorous, The Gap of Time is bursting with Winterson’s signature wit and whimsicality as she weaves many of her familiar themes of love, memory and the malleability of time into one of her favorite Shakepearean stories and her joy in adapting it is pleasantly palpable across every page.

‘Sometimes it doesn't matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn't matter that it's night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It's not that time stops or that it hasn't started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime.’

Those unfamiliar with the original story need not worry or do any pre-reading homework as Winterson begins the remix with a brief but detailed retelling before dropping a new beat. Though having just read Shakespeare’s tale it was nice to notice a lot of the subtle gags and nods and made me really think about how charmingly clever Winterson’s humor style is. It follows the basics of the original tale, though instead of King’s Leontes and Polixenes we have Londoners Leo and Xeno, two life-long friends who met when they were sent to the same boarding school by divorcing parents and bonded in ways both emotionally and sexually. As one would expect, this friendship comes to a dramatic end when Leo becomes obsessed with proving his wife, the famous musician MiMi, is having an affair with—and carrying the unborn child—of Xeno. After the 16 year gap of time, we also meet the residence of New Bohemia in the US where Perdita has been taken in by Shep and his son Clo and the delightful Autolycus retains his name as a shady car salesman down from Detroit with the slogan ‘Autos Like Us.’

‘You think you’re living in the present but the past is right behind you like a shadow.’

There is a genuine joy emanating from this book that is rather infectious and it moves between humor and heartbreak rather fluidly. While it doesn’t necessarily feature the strongest writing from Winterson its still hit some great high notes and abstract narrative bits that fans will have come to love and the overall playfulness makes up for it. Here we see Winterson work with her favorite themes while also getting to try out some fun scenes like car chases. I enjoyed her little self-inserts, from a character being said to have appeared in a musical theater adaptation of Winterson’s The PowerBook or Winterson becoming a character herself who gets up from the action and walks away from the stage to reflect on the story directly to the reader.

‘He doesn't take a photo or a video because he wants to remember — by which he means he wants to misremember because the moment is made up of what the camera can't capture.’

Winterson tells us there are ‘so many stories of lost and found’ where ‘The past lies in wait as an ambush,’ but, for her, this Shakespearean story of fear, frailty, foundlings and, ultimately, forgiveness stands above them all. ‘All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around, and that carry us around,’ she writes, ‘I have worked with The Winter's Tale in many disguises for many years ... And I love cover versions.’ In fact, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is a cover version itself of Robert Greene’s 1588 prose novel Pandosto: The Triumph Of Time. This is the Greene who once called Shakespeare an ‘upstart crow’ and often disparaged him in print, and while Shakespeare never responded during Greene’s lifetime he certainly got the last word with his rewrite. In an essay about writing The Gap of Time that appeared in The Guardian, Winterson notes;

‘after Greene dropped dead, Pandosto was stripped of its body parts and given life as a tense drama of sexual jealousy and the betrayal of every loyalty: of friendship, marriage, kinship, service and – because this is Shakespeare – a deeper note of disloyalty to life itself. Leontes plays God. Shakespeare doesn’t like that in a man.’

While the play was once considered one of Shakespeare’s comedies, it has been often recategorized as one of his late romances or his problem plays due to the rather psychological middle portion. But for Winterson ‘it’s a play about forgiveness and a world of possible futures—and how forgiveness and the future are tied together in both directions.’ It’s ‘an “old tale,” a fairy tale,’ Winterson says, often incorporating fairy tales as a way to better understand the world, but Shakespeare’s is something unique in a way that really speaks to her:

‘[I]n a fairy tale the threat usually comes from the outside—a dragon or an army or an evil sorcerer. Shakespeare, anticipating Freud, puts the threat where it really is: on the inside. I wrote a cover version because the play has been a private text for me for more than thirty years. By that I mean part of the written wor(l)d I can’t live without; without, not in the sense of lack, but in the old sense of living outside of something.’

Indeed, one can detect the influences across her work just as much as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando feels like a touchstone influence in her stories. Having been commissioned by The Hogarth Press to write the first of a series of modern Shakespeare retellings to mark the 400th anniversary of his death, it was the perfect opportunity for Winterson to approach the story directly.

‘Every endeavor, every kiss, every stab in the heart, every letter home, every leaving, is a ransack of what’s in front of us in the service of what’s lost.’

In her intro to the novel, Winterson explains that ‘it’s a play about a foundling. And I am.’ Stories of children growing up as “foundlings,” like Perdita here, have been a common motif in her novels. Such as Silver in Lighthousekeeping , Jordan being adopted by Dog Woman in Sexing the Cherry , or the autobiographical examination of being adopted by Mrs. Winterson in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit . While Perdita may be happy with her adopted family in New Bohemia, there is always a nagging yearning to know the start of her own story. Winterson addresses this feeling in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? :

‘Adopted children are self-invented because we have to be; there is an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently, like a bomb in the womb. The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story — of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you — and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.
…The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.’

We see this often in Perdita who reflects on ‘the missingness of the missing’ and that ‘every endeavor, every kiss, every stab in the heart, every letter home, every leaving, is a ransack of what’s in front of us in the service of what’s lost.’ Winterson has long written about how she filled life with stories, which is not unlike like Perdita who ‘not having a history of her own, she was drawn to the history of others.’ This plays well as a joke about Xeno as a deadbeat dad because ‘when you've finished a book you can put it away and it doesn't ask to see you again.’ There is certainly a tenderness in the way she writes the headstrong and caring Perdita, and it makes it easy to love her.

‘What is memory but a rope slung across time?’

This is a fun little book that made for a perfect read as I crossed the Atlantic back towards home after seeing Winterson speak at Hay Festival, and was especially pleased to find Winterson quotes my favorite of her novels, The Passion , stating ‘What you risk reveals what you value’ which was the very quote she had written in my copy of The Passion only a few hours prior. In fact, Leo’s office has RISK = VALUE written in neon, which plays into the themes on the financial crisis and how Leo values money above all else. ‘Everything he did with money was reckless, but no one wanted to fire him for his reckless profits,’ he quips, and there are some great moments where he is fairly ignorant to how his own financial gambling affects more than just himself.

‘money and power being the most important things to you, you reckon they are the most important things to those that don't have them. Maybe to some people they are -- because the way guys like you have fixed the world, only a lottery ticket can change it for guys like me. Hard work and hope won't do it anymore. The American Dream is done.’

Ultimately, we see the failures of the older generation be passed along as trauma to the younger generation who, in order to thrive, must undo the legacy of shame and destruction and forgive in order to move forward, both in terms of family but also the destruction of unrestrained capitalist profits growing the class divide.

‘ Forgiveness is a word like a tiger - there’s footage of it and verifiably it exists but few of us have seen it close and wild or known it for what it is.’

In the end, love is what matters. Winterson describes how stories bend towards three endings: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. While there is plenty of the first two, she concludes with a celebration of the third. It is what makes life bearable, it is what gives us control over our timeline. ‘What is memory anyway but a painful dispute with the past?’ she asks, but through forgiveness we too can be like Superman spinning time backwards to recolor painful memories in brighter shades of a hopeful future. The Gap of Time is a delightful romp that reimagines Shakespeare and reminds me why I’ve long loved Jeanette Winterson.

4.5/5

‘And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman’s fortune or one man’s loss. And we can’t know the lives of others. And we can’t know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside of the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.’

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thematically, this was a good follow-on from a read of Nicole Krauss’ exquisite The History of Love (see my review HERE): the first few pages alone included death, bereavement, forgiveness, revenge, loss of a child, identity, God, loyalty and love - as well as capitalism, mercy killing, and madness.

Stylistically, there was no comparison: this is a simpler story - despite the numerous references to changing the speed, or even direction of time - and it’s mostly told in rather crude and wooden prose (very un-Winterson), especially the many male perspectives. Disappointing (2.5*, rounded up to 3*), hence hard to review.

What is Family?

“So many stories of lost and found. As though the whole of history is a vast Lost-Property Department.”

• Could I give up my child? No.
• Could I love someone else’s child as much as if that child had been born to me? I don’t think so.
And yet I don’t believe that family is purely about blood.
Unconditional love of a child not born to you is surely the most selfless love of all.
I suppose I am a selfish person, except in relation to my child, who is, and always will be, a part of me.

This is Shakespeare’s tale of a foundling, retold for and in the 21st century. As Winterson wrote in her brilliant autobiography, Why Be Happy when you Could be Normal? (see my review HERE), “Adopted children are self-invented... adoption drops you into the story after it has started”. Time, and the sequence of a story, is a recurring theme (as are Superman and Oedipus).

“The missingness of the missing… Every endeavor, every kiss, every stab in the heart, every letter home, every leaving, is a ransack of what’s in front of us in the service of what’s lost.”

A few days after I finished reading this, I saw Kenneth Branagh's version of The Winter's Tale (see my review HERE). In that, redemption and forgiveness are more prominent than the child lost and found - because Perdita doesn't know she's not her father's daughter until the denouement. Presumably, Winterson made Shep black so that everyone always knew, and thus the foundling angle, a common thread in her work (that mirrors her own life) comes to the fore. Seeing the stage version also made me more appreciative of what Winterson has achieved here in general. My grudging 3* for this became a solid 3*.

New and Alternative Realities

“The baby had lain like the visible corner of a folded map. Traced inside her, faded now, were parents she would never know and a life that had vanished. Alternative routes she wouldn’t take. People she would never meet. The would-be-that-wouldn’t-be.”

We enjoy visiting other realms: through books, films, dreams. We invent and reinvent ourselves, not always consciously. We do it over time, and to some extent, according to context and company: my colleagues see a subtly different Cecily from the one my family sees, and friends see yet other facets.

Adopted children have more necessity and scope defining themselves. Perdita, her adoptive father, Shep, and brother, Clo, have to create a reality: a past, a present, and hence a future. Shep thinks he tells her the truth, or at least, as much as he can, but it’s predicated on lies and unknowns. “She had stopped asking questions because there weren’t any answers.”

Perdita’s identity may be mysterious, but she is raised with love and comes to believe in herself as she is. In contrast, those involved in her conception and abandonment know who they are, but have more problematic relations with reality, and hence find happiness elusive.

As children of (different) dysfunctional parents, “Leo and Xeno invented worlds where they could live”, but they never fully grow up or develop the ability to be responsible parents themselves.

Leo makes the world revolve around him, as super-rich City traders can. But even he can’t live happily in this world, much less his wife MiMi and their children. Madness and destruction beckon.

Meanwhile, Xeno devotes himself to virtual worlds, developing a video game, The Gap of Time. At Level 4, “Time becomes a player. Time can stand still, move faster, slow down”. But it can’t reverse, can it (unless you’re Superman)? Reality is further muddied, because the game features Dark Angels, echoing the song that made MiMi famous, which is in turn based on de Nerval’s dream (see “Fall”, below).

And MiMi retreats to an ambiguous existence, maybe in the game, maybe in the world, maybe both - or even neither. Life and death have different meanings in virtual worlds.

“Those are the facts but are they the truths?”

Fall

There is much falling here: falling in love, falling (or being pushed) over, falling between gaps of time or buildings, the autumnal fall of leaves, and of course, as a metaphor for the expulsion from Paradise.

Tying them together is a catch-22 allegory, dreamed by French poet, Gérard de Nerval: an angel fell into the courtyard between buildings, trapped by his wings, which he’d folded as he fell. To free himself, would destroy the homes and maybe those within. To stay, was certain, slow death. Meanwhile, an old woman stuffed a pillow with the feathers that drifted into her apartment.

Weaknesses

I don’t want to put people off Winterson, but I do want a note of why I didn’t warm to this. The bullet points below are not spoilers in terms of plot.


• There was almost none of the carefully crafted and poetic prose I expect from Winterson. It improved a little towards the end, but only a little. Mostly, she was channelling people she didn’t seem to relate to, so neither did I.

• Leo is too easy to hate, too soon. He is a caricature of the worst type of City trader, with an abhorrent attitude to women, sex, friends, money, and Jews: “like a cartoon of somebody who’s unstable who turns out to be himself”.

• For a novel about time, the period feels wrong. It starts in a plausible 2013, but is mostly set about seventeen years later. Winterson’s 2030 feels self-consciously like 2013. If it’s deliberate, I find it odd and annoying; if it’s not, it’s inexcusable. For instance, will Facebook, iPads, 3D printing, using a map on a smartphone, MILF, and ROFL etc still be current and yet unusual enough to be noteworthy or need explaining? It also assumes that in the US, Hemingway will still be known, but Thoreau’s Walden will be almost forgotten.

• Aspects of the plot were tricky to make plausible in modern times, but when Winterson had contrived an explanation, it would have been less distracting to have had it earlier, e.g. how Perdita’s adoptive father could have got away with raising her (he was a black middle-aged widower and she was a white baby with no paperwork).

• Cars are weapons of murder, except for the DeLorean, because this is about time. Just strange.

• I couldn’t decide whether citing MiMi’s stage debut as being in an adaptation of a real Winterson book smacks of hubris or humour.


For balance, here are my reviews of three Wintersons I’ve enjoyed in recent years, all 4*:
The Passion
Lighthousekeeping
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Context : Shakespeare to Winterson

This is a modern story, based on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. I’d not read the play, and had no memory of seeing it performed in my teens. I chose to read this novel in its own right. Winterson, or her publisher, had other ideas: the book starts with a shortish chapter titled “The Original”, which summarises the play. It’s followed by “The Cover Version”, which is in three acts, complete with “intervals”. A few days later, I saw the play, reviewed HERE.

It’s one of a series of modern novelisations of the Bard, commissioned by The Hogarth Press to mark 400 years since his death (http://crownpublishing.com/hogarth-sh...). It’s no surprise Winterson chose The Winter’s Tale, given its parallels to her own life.

Winterson was put up for adoption by her birth mother, and never loved by her abusive adoptive Pentecostalist mother (her adoptive father being too weak to intervene). She escaped via literature, especially Shakespeare, and then by writing. Like Perdita here, “Not having a history of her own, she was drawn to the history of others”, mostly fictional ones.

In later life, Winterson met her birth mother and some family members, though it was not a particularly happy-ever-after.

She’s explicitly written about her origins in the fictionalised growing-up story, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, (see my review HERE), and in her recent memoirs, Why Be Happy when you Could be Normal?, (see my review HERE), but the themes of loss, abandonment, adoption, and the power of literature permeate her works. This is no exception.

See also Margaret Atwood's clever reworking of The Tempest, titled Hag-Seed, which I reviewed HERE.

Quotes
Forgiveness
Winterson categorises three types of ending: revenge, tragedy and forgiveness. The story features all three drivers, but forgiveness is at its heart and at its end, though you might not expect that from this early quote:
• “Forgiveness is a word like a tiger - there’s footage of it and verifiably it exists but few of us have seen it close and wild or known it for what it is.”

Time
• “You think you’re living in the present but the past is right behind you like a shadow.”
• “And then everything happened in slow motion and too fast.”
• “Beyond lay the river, like possibilities, like plans, wide as life when you are young and don’t know that plans, rivers, possibilities must sooner or later empty into the ocean beyond.”
• “Sometimes it doesn’t matter that there was any time before this time… Sometimes where you are is enough. It’s not that time stops or that it hasn’t started. This is time,. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime.”
• “The past is a grenade that explodes when thrown.”
• “The past lies in wait as an ambush.”
• “There’s Big Ben telling clock time, and down below there’s the Thames telling liquid time, and in the small space they occupy their own time is real.”
• “Watching the water that has no memory and wanting to be like the water.”
• “She walks to stop herself standing still. As though she could walk out of time, put it behind her where it belongs. But she can’t because it’s always right there, right in front of her.”

Memory
• “What is memory anyway but a painful dispute with the past?”
• “He doesn’t take a photo or a video because he wants to remember - by which he means he wants to misremember.”

Grief and Loss
• “I don’t regret it but I can't forgive it. I did the right thing but it was wrong… We were one flesh… I didn’t do it to end my wife’s pain; I did it to end my own.”
• “My wife no longer exists… But my mind is full of her. If she had never lived… they’d lock me up for being delusional. As it is, I’m grieving.”
• “Grief means living with someone who is not there.”

Other
• “Gaming is the best technology mated with prehistoric levels of human development.”
• City trading is like Musical Chairs, “while the music was playing no one cared that there weren’t enough chairs”.
• “The boarding school was neither fashionable nor academic but it allowed their fathers to believe that they were bringing up their sons when in fact their sons were barely at home.”
• “He was solitary and introverted, with an enthusiasm that people took for sociability.”
• “They talked about life as flow… About love as a theory marred by practice. About love as a practice marred by theory.”
• “Pauline was a woman of her time. She hadn’t had the leisure for a relationship. She had been a career woman all her life. She noted there was no such thing as a career man. She had made her choices. No regrets. But there were losses. There always are.”
• “A white shirt so obsessively unwrinkled it looked like it had been ironed with Botox.” !
• “Celebrities are fictional characters. Just because they are alive doesn’t make them real.”

Image source of twisted clock face: https://st2.depositphotos.com/1526952...

[Phrynne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find the hardest books to review are the ones I really do not like. I don't want to write an unending page of criticisms but I do want to record my personal feelings so I do not pick the book up again in the future.

So for the record I found many passages too objectionable to read and eventually gave up because I have a huge list of books I do want to read waiting.

This one just was not for me.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hogarth Books has embarked on a project to commission acclaimed modern writers to re-tell the stories of Shakespeare. 'The Gap of Time' by Jeanette Winterson is the first of the books to be published.

http://www.vintage-books.co.uk/about-...

This volume retells 'The Winter's Tale.'
Would I have noticed that it was a retelling of Shakespeare if it hadn't been stated right up front? Not at first, no. (There's an introductory re-cap - kind of 'The Winters Tale For Dummies' - to get the events and characters fresh in our minds.)

The first part of the novel introduces a contemporary drama. Stumbling into the aftermath of a violent crime scene, an African-American father and son discover a dead body on the ground, next to a 'safe-haven' baby drop - and an infant in that 'drop.'. Although unwilling to call the cops and get involved, the two men 'rescue' the baby, assuming she was abandoned and unwanted, and adopt her, calling her 'Perdita.'

Little did any of them know the complicated and ugly truth behind why baby Perdita ended up where she was. But as readers, we gradually learn, as we meet Leo, an arrogant, obnoxious and obsessive "1%-er," his closest friend from childhood, the free-spirited slacker Xeno, and the woman who (inexplicably) cares for both of them - the French chanteuse MiMi. Leo insists on using the strands of the tangled web woven between them to strangle them all, in a shocking tragedy.

I really liked this first part of the book, and thought it worked quite well on its own merits. However, the second and third parts of the novel start getting more concerned with the Shakespeare/Winterson parallels, which I thought began to feel forced. The plot events also begin to cross the line from family melodrama into straight-up absurd comedy. And around there, it lost me a little.

Overall, it's good, but not one of my favorites of all time. Definitely recommended if you're a particular Shakespeare fan though.

Many thanks to Hogarth and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeanette Winterson is a master wordsmith, and she actually has me hooked. I'm not even exaggerating here, she really does, and I'm loving the ride. My bookcase is building up a marvellous collection of Winterson's works, and it craves more.

Being one of Shakespeares more difficult and complex fables, I was immensely impressed with Winterson's ability to translate it into a more contemporary story. Her technique was astonishing. At the very beginning of the book, it read like a Shakespeare play typically would, and it made me a little apprehensive, but, a few pages in, Winterson's definitive style appeared, and my heart started beating just that little bit faster.
I thought the characters were all tremendously well developed, and some of them were that interesting, I thought they could really have their own little story.
You can usually tell when you're reading a Winterson book, as the element of erotica slips in. It existed in this book, but not overwhelmingly so. This was so beautifully written, and was done in such a unique style, that I was pretty disappointed when I came to the end. Just amazing.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

“I discover that grief means living with someone who is not there.”

Boy do I have mixed feelings about this book. “The Gap of Time” is a cover version of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale”, a play I love. This novel is part of the “Hogarth Shakespeare” a project where noted contemporary authors write cover versions of Shakespeare’s works. I will read more in this series, but not because of “The Gap of Time.”
I have never read any of Jeanette Winterson’s work before, and she clearly is a gifted writer. There are moments in this text where the prose is beautiful and profound. At times, I had to sit for a second and digest what I had just read. Lines like, “Forgiveness is a word like tiger-there’s footage of it and verifiably it exists but few of us have seen it close and wild or known it for what it is” and “And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed.” That is good stuff right there.
Unfortunately those moments are buried in a text that is melodrama of the highest order, and has more than a few aspects where I have no clue what the author was thinking. Now before you get mad and say much of Shakespeare is melodramatic, I am well aware. However, his gift was taking melodrama and bringing great human truth and beauty to it. He is Shakespeare, so I forgive Ms. Winterson for not being able to pull it off.
What I do blame her for are some choices that seem too cute by half. The decision to make much of this plot and thematic relevance rest on a video game is superfluous and brings nothing to the text. Her insistence on being “modern” is also cloying and a bit irritating. She really wants to show how progressive she is. Rarely have I read a book where the author wants you to be well aware that this person is black, this one gay, this one Jewish, this one lapsed Christian, this one German, this one Trans, etc. It is a bit much. Write a real fully developed character and that will speak to me. I do not need you to label a two dimensional character for me. That does nothing for either of us.
But having said that, it is a quick read and although I rolled my eyes a few times I enjoyed the experience. Taking on Shakespeare is a monumental task and I give her props for that.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and sticks quite closely to the plot (not completely). The story moves from London after the 2008 crash and moves to the US and the fictional city of New Bohemia, which feels a little like New Orleans. The novel, like the play revolves around revenge and forgiveness, a child (Perdita) abandoned and found. The parallels with the play are clever and original and there is humour running through the tale as well as revenge, tragedy and forgiveness:
“And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman’s fortune or one man’s loss. And we can’t know the lives of others. And we can’t know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside of the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.”
Those of you that recall the plot will remember the jealousy of Leontes (Leo) in regard to his wife MiMi and his friend Xeno. Leo has installed a camera to spy on his heavily pregnant wife so he can catch her out with Xeno. On this occasion Leo’s PA Pauline is also present as well as Xeno. It’s all innocent and nothing untoward is happening. However Leo’s mind is working overtime:
“Was Pauline a Top? All Leo knew about lesbian sex came from porn sites but he was pretty sure there had to be a Top and a Bottom. But Mimi was eight months pregnant—she couldn’t have sex on her back. If she couldn’t be a Bottom—and she couldn’t be a Top because, damnit, she was his wife—then she must be a Side. Do lesbians have Sides as well as Tops and Bottoms? They must do.”
Winterson uses humour throughout which balances well with the tragedy. Now I know there have been quite a few reviewers that didn’t really like this, but I really did. It read very easily and Winterson’s take on the play worked for me.
“Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely
Each one demand an answer to his part
Perform’d in this wide gap of time since first
We were dissever’d: hastily lead away.”

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little nervous about reading this because I am not really familiar with The Winter's Tale, but I found this a very enjoyable book. The barbarity of parts of the original story must have made the update (or cover version) quite a challenge to create. This is a thought provoking book of ideas leavened with a surprising amount of humour. I won't try and comment on the details because that would expose my ignorance!

[Maxwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap..."
-The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

"Sometimes it doesn't matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn't matter that it's night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It's not that time stops or that it hasn't started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime."
-The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

This novel, considered a 'cover version' more than a retelling of Shakespeare's late romance The Winter's Tale, plays similarly with the theme of, as you'd expect from its title, time. It's quite a close rendition of the original play, so anyone familiar with the story will not find anything incredibly innovative here. But what Winterson does with the characters' identities is quite nice. She messes with race, sexuality, positions of power and influence to create a unique dynamic that toys with the times much like Shakespeare did in his day.

Overall, however, I found myself enjoying but not overly enthusiastic about the story. I can't blame Winterson really because she did exactly as she was meant to; she created a modern version of a Shakespeare play. But it left little to the imagination, and that leaves me a bit nervous about how other authors will interpret their assigned plays. Authors have two options: either tell an updated but literal interpretation or use the play as inspiration to create an original story. Winterson went with the former, and in the end, I was hoping for a bit more innovation, more playfulness with structure and time, and generally something a bit more experimental. Not a bad book, especially if you are unfamiliar with the original text, but not as memorable as I was hoping.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was provided a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

The Gap of Time is a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" as part of a larger series of authors doing the same for several of his works. (You can read more about the project at The Guardian). Retelling is used loosely, as the names are not the same, nor are all of the situations. The themes of jealousy, forgiveness, parenting - they're all still here!

So how should I examine this novel?
Shall I compare it to the Shakespeare play? (har har...)
Some things are lost by moving out of verse, although Winterson sometimes uses very poetic language particularly for internal dialogue. The villain is very rough, more than Shakespeare could ever have allowed, with more rape language and violence than could have worked on the stage. The characters suffer from too much coincidence but I wonder how restrained the author felt from the original subject matter.

Compared to Winterson's other works, I felt like she was juggling too many requirements to really immerse in her typical writing style. I felt like it was well done if I was not thinking Winterson! But thinking of her and comparing it to her books that are favorites, well it just isn't nearly as thought-provoking or beautiful. It is definitely a compelling story, and was probably a fun challenge, but I still wanted it to be more transformative.

[Liz Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman's fortune or one man's loss. And we can't know the lives of others. And we can't know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change."

This novel is the introduction to the Hogarth Shakespeare, a collection which will include eight novels by eight different writers, where the famous plays of Shakespeare will be retold in a modern setting. And we come to start with none other than Jeannette Winterson and The Winter's Tale, one of the Bard's most beloved plays as well as controversial for its traumatic beginning acts and happy ending. Most people know this play for the famous "Exit, pursued by a bear," (perhaps the best death and exit I have ever witnessed and will ever witness in my entire life) but the story is so much more. It is the story of the oracle of Delphi, a queen named Hermione, a crazy jealous king, and royalty that does not know is royalty, in its retold way, a famous Paris singer/songwriter(MiMi), a hedge fund manager with a knack for paranoia(Leo), a video game designer with some love for both the singer and the manager(Xeno), as well as a girl who thinks the guy she cares for is her brother(Perdita and Zel). Yet, the best part, is the psychological trauma suffered by the characters, which I was glad this re-telling held, although, it is mostly a story about time, time is the main focus of the story, not the darkness of the original play. I do also have to add, that instead of a complete retelling, this is more of a revision or her own response to the play, so do not expect a scene per scene modern telling of the classic.

This is not my first Winterson novel, I've read some of her other novels, and one theme that floats along all of them, is the beautiful writing. Jeanette Winterson has a way with words, she threads very enchanting sentences, but in this novel, it made some characters seem too crude, with instances of their dialogue implying some rape (committing it) and violence(also committing it), which were not vindictive of the original work. Aside from that, I cannot complain over her use of words, metaphors, similes, allusions, denotations, euphemisms, and many more I most likely missed.

“He doesn't take a photo or a video because he wants to remember — by which he means he wants to misremember because the moment is made up of what the camera can't capture.”


My favourite part were the other literary references, from Oedipus to other Shakespearean works, to even Fox News:“Remember the story of Oedipus?”“Eddy who?”“Guy who murdered his father and married his mother.”“Was that on Fox News?” And other small glimpses of brilliance: “…. They had no idea about viruses in those days. Plagues were sent from the gods.”“They said that about AIDS. Even I knew it was a stupid thing to say and I’m no doctor.”“One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesn’t happen to everyone.”She also wrote in queer characters, which although I did not see any of that in the original work, it was not a surprise, since it's sort of a hallmark of her novels and poetry, and in turn, added a lot to Xeno and Leo's relationship, but I do disagree with other characterizations. I was not pleased with MiMi's (Hermione's version) plot-line, such as who she was and did (and had done to her), because it seemed to deviate for what I have always envisioned, however, many of the reviews I've read like that about it, whether they have read the original work or not, therefore I seem to be an outlier. Because of this, I was more entranced by the love story and Perdita's adoptive family, than with the main three characters disruptive lives.

Another theme that gets explored here is adopted children and whether or not they feel connected to their adoptive families, or if they are always in a state of hunger to know more about their birth family. We are never truly given a definite answer, or at least the truth perceived by the author, but this book is not meant to find an answer, it is about the daughter finding the answer herself. Perdita asks about her family before, but she is confronted with incomplete or false answers, because her father and bother don't know about her family, so she stops asking. What she does know, is that she is loved and cared for, and that is enough for her.

This below, is my favourite quote in the work, because it indicates a way of thinking that is seeing the greatest shrinking of the American middle-class in history:

"...money and power being the most important things to you, you reckon they are the most important things to those that don't have them. Maybe to some people they are -- because the way guys like you have fixed the world, only a lottery ticket can change it for guys like me. Hard work and hope won't do it anymore. The American Dream is done."

[Loredana (Bookinista08) · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte frumoasă! Frumoasă rău! Foarte rar pot spune despre o carte că e frumoasă, de obicei spun că a fost bună sau interesantă. Ei bine, nu, de data asta declar cu mâna pe inimă că a fost frumoasă! De la stilul de scriere al lui Winterson, la povestea ambiguă de dragoste adolescentină dintre Leo și Xeno, la jocul PC cu îngeri căzuți care îi leagă pe Leo, Xeno și MiMi atunci când aceștia nu vor să mai știe unul de celălalt, la dragostea puternică dintre Perdita și tatăl ei adoptiv, Shep, la umorul molipsitor al lui Autolycus. Și aș putea s-o țin așa la nesfârșit. Adevărul e că mi-au plăcut foarte multe aspecte ale acestui roman, motiv pentru care îl recomand din toată inima mea! Citiți-l și veți înțelege de ce!

***recenzia la link-ul de mai jos***

https://literaryjungle.wordpress.com/...

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I loved Anne Tyler's "Vinegar Girl", a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, and Margaret Atwood's "Hagseed", her retelling of The Tempest, this version of The Winter's Tale left me cold. I have loved the other Jeanette Winterson books I've read, but just could not connect to this one.

So, not giving up on either Winterson or the Hogarth Press Shakespeare Project. 3 stars because it was too good to give up on, but left me happy to move on after finishing.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abandon ship, baby. Before it's too late. Jump ship, baby, don't wait. The threat's not yours, it's mine. We're caught in a gap of time.

I have never read or seen a production of The Winter's Tale, but knowing that it was the source material for Jeanette Winterson's “cover version”, The Gap of Time, I thoroughly researched Shakespeare's play before opening the book – and in a way I needn't have: Helpfully, Winterson opens the book with a detailed summary of the play. On the other hand, I'm glad that I did look into it myself because that's where I learned two important facts: The Winter's Tale is considered one of the most magical of Shakespeare's plays to see live (with a shocking, fantastical ending); and in its day, the title would have been equivalent to “an old wives' tale” – a signal to the audience that this story might be shocking and fantastical and they shouldn't take the plot too literally. This is important because by rooting her update in reality, Winterson purposefully drains the story of its magic, and in the end, I found it all a little dull. Spoilers to follow (if that's a relevant statement to make about a four hundred year old story).

Sometimes it doesn't matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn't matter if it's night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It's not that time stops or that it hasn't started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime.

In Shakespeare's original: When King Leontes of Sicily suspects that his old friend Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, has been having an affair with his pregnant wife, Hermione, Leontes threatens his friend's life, who flees back home. When a daughter, Perdita, is born, Leontes disavows paternity and has the baby abandoned in the wilderness, and after the accidental death of their only other child, Hermione dies of grief. Sixteen years pass, and after having been found and raised by a simple shepherd, Perdita falls in love with Polixenes' son, Florizel, they all return to Sicily, and are reunited with Leontes with much contrition and forgiveness. When they visit a statue of Hermione, the dead queen comes to life and all move forward into a happy ending.

The “cover version”: Leo is a London-based money manager whose actions not only contributed to the 2008 recession, but he was able to massively profit from the aftermath with his new company, Sicilia. He suspects that his old friend, Xeno, has been having an affair with his pregnant wife, MiMi (a French pop star), and when he threatens his friend's life (trying to murder him with a car), Xeno flees back home. When a daughter, Perdita, is born, Leo disavows paternity and has the baby sent to Xeno (but through some credulity-stretching mishaps, the baby ends up being raised by a bar owner named Shepherd). Eighteen years later, Perdita falls in love with Xeno's son, Zel, and they all travel to London so she can meet Leo. There is much contrition and hesitant forgiveness, and while MiMi had gone into hiding after losing both her children, she gives a surprise performance at a charity concert and everyone can hope to move forward towards a happy ending.

And the story fell out stone by stone, shining and held, the way time is held in a diamond, the way the light is held in each stone. And stones speak, and what was silent opens its mouth to tell a story and the story is set in stone to break the stone. What happened happened.

But.

The past is a grenade that explodes when thrown.

Near the end, Winterson interjects her own voice into the story, explaining that The Winter's Tale had been “a private text for me for more than thirty years”. Having been adopted herself, she identifies with Perdita (the “little lost girl”), and having had an unsatisfactory reunion with her own birth family, Winterson would have understood about feelings of abandonment and the improbability of forgiveness. It's weird, then, that her modern day Perdita feels the least developed. At least Leo had enough backstory to explain his maniacal jealousies: Having relished an experimental sexual relationship with the charismatic Xeno at boarding school, it's nearly understandable that seeing Xeno and MiMi together in the now, obviously enjoying each other's company, would have made him jealous of both of them (and especially since it turned out that Xeno and MiMi were a bit in love with each other; if not for their loyalty to Leo...) In my pre-reading, I had learned that there's often a gay subtext to Leontes and Polixenes' relationship, so I'd imagine that aspect of the play would have been part of what made this Shakespeare work so personal to Winterson (as a noted LGBT writer). But as much as she identified with everything – maybe even being the perfect author for reinterpreting this particular play for the Hogarth Shakespeare Series – maybe this literal update of the The Winter's Tale was simply the wrong overall approach.

I also found it odd that The Gap of Time name-drops both The Winter's Tale and Jeanette Winterson herself; that people incidentally bring up and discuss Oedipus; that there are lines like, He lifted a toast to Perdita and drank back the whisky like he was Tristan and she was Isolde or Superman is powerful enough to belt the earth like Puck on speed and turn back time: this frequent referencing of ancient myths and Shakespearean works felt overly deliberate and intrusive. On the other hand, I loved everything about the computer game creator Xeno's MMORPG (also called “The Gap of Time”) based on fallen angels from the French poet Gérard de Nerval's dream and subsequent verse; I'd play that game and it added some of the magic and wonder back into the storyline.

And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman's fortune or one man's loss. And we can't know the lives of others. And we can't know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside of the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.

This makes my fourth book in the Hogarth project (plus Ian McEwan's semi-related Nutshell), and again, it seems like any attempt to do a straight update of one of Shakespeare's plays as a novel doesn't quite work. A little dull, a little unbelievable, a little too little; I'd rather have seen a statue come to life.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is based on an uncorrected proof that I won in a GoodReads give away.

4.5 stars. I loved it. But this contains things that are catnip to me: a Shakespearean story retold by a talented writer. I saw The Winter’s Tale performed last year, so it was reasonably fresh in my mind as I read The Gap of Time. Winterson, Winter’s Tale, how perfect.

Winterson has the writing chops to pull this off. I love the playfulness of her writing in this novel—totally appropriate, as Shakespeare wrote plenty of humour into the original. And I think the bawdy Bard would approve of some of her cheeky observations about human sexuality.

A couple of the things that made me smile:

Xeno, describing computer games: “Have you ever noticed how ninety per cent of games feature tattooed white men with buzzcuts beating the shit out of the world in stolen cars? It’s like living in a hardcore gay nightclub on a military base.”

“There was a knock at the door. It was Clo and Lorraine LaTrobe. ‘We’ve come to wish you luck, little sister,’ said Clo. Lorraine LaTrobe was dressed in a skintight one-piece Lycra suit and spike heels. Her hair was piled on her head and dyed red like a stop light…’Hello, Mrs. Levy,’ said Lorraine. ‘We’ll be in the front row.’ She took Clo’s hand and led him off. ‘She’s quite a woman,’ said Shep. ‘She’s trans,’ said Pauline [Mrs. Levy]."

And of course, I love tons of literary references. Oedipus, Hemingway, several other Shakespearean works, plus a little reference to the author herself!

So why did I knock off half a star? The reason may not even be in the final version of the book. It’s the last 5ish pages, the explaining and philosophizing. Put it in an afterword. Put it in a post-script. Just don’t attach it to the actual tale as if it’s part of that story.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do like this book, but to a certain extent the jury is still out as far as how I feel about it.

Winterson was the first author to release her book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series and for that reason alone this must have been a big challenge and ‘retelling’ Shakespeare must be a daunting (if not overwhelming) prospect for any author.

‘The Winters’ Tale’ is clearly a book which is very close to Winterson’s heart – perhaps too close? Which may explain her somewhat overly reverential and therefore ultimately predictable treatment of the story? I found the book self-consciously modern (not sure what the video gaming added to the story?). Some passages (those generally involving Leo’s psychopathic frenzies) felt almost like some kind of pulp/trash/fiction/pseudo neo-noir if that makes any sense? I also found some of the characters two-dimensional, stereotypical and not fully realised to any extent.

I have never read any other Winterson, so I have no idea whether this book is typical or representative of her style(s)? There were however for me, definitely flashes of utter brilliance in some of her prose passages, however this retelling of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ ultimately just felt a too obvious and too easy re-tread – almost as though a Hollywood producer had commissioned an ‘edgy contemporary US version of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ – and that being the case, it does what it says on the tin.

It’s still good and still definitely worth a read. I have enjoyed the other two in the series out so far (Anne Tyler and Howard Jacobson) much more. Looking forward to Margaret Atwood ‘Hag-Seed’ now!

[Liz Brooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won a copy of THE GAP OF TIME (a modern retelling of Shakespeare's THE WINTER'S TALE) in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you!

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book.

As a general rule, I try to be fair and polite when I write reviews. I don’t want to discourage authors, no matter how much I dislike their work. But I am struggling to keep my claws in on this one, so grab your popcorn and settle in. This could get intense.

The first chapter was beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. I honestly thought it was going to be one of my top favorites for this year, at least. There were wonderful lines, quotes like:

“What is a memory anyway but a painful dispute with the past?

I read that the body remakes itself every seven years. Every cell. Even the bones rebuild themselves like coral. Why then do we remember what should be long gone? What’s the point of every scar and humiliation? What is the point of remembering the good times when they are gone. I love you. I miss you. You are dead.”

And:

“See what I mean about memory? My wife no longer exists. There is no such person. Her passport has been cancelled. Her bank account is closed. Someone else is wearing her clothes. But my mind is full of her. If she had never lived and my mind was full of her they’d lock me up for being delusional. As it is, I am grieving.

I discover that grief means living with someone who is not there.”

I love quotes like these. I eat them up. I was sure THE GAP OF TIME and I were going to be fast friends. Having already lucked out with VINEGAR GIRL, another Hogarth Shakespeare that I won at the beginning of the year, I thought that maybe I was going to be two for two. Lucky me.

Then I got to the second chapter and everything went downhill so fast it was like watching a landslide take out all the houses on a hill. I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading. Of course, there had been a couple warning signs. I’d had to go ahead and skip a few pages because there was some rather explicit sexual stuff. But I figured, whatever, these things happen, especially in adult novels, and I will just have to suck it up and be a big girl and move on. I knew I was signing up for an adult novel when I entered the giveaway.

Except it got more and more awful. So. Awful.

After the red herring of a beginning, the story switches from an introspective first person narrative to an angry, angry third person POV. We go from Shep, a character I would have loved to spend the whole book with, to Leo, the stereotypical adult fiction male whose thought life makes me want to take a shower. I didn’t want to be in his mind—his awful, dirty, violent, chauvinistic, angryangryangry mind. I skimmed most of his portion because it was so unnecessarily explicit, and there was no balance to make his thoughts easier to stomach.

“Wait,” you say. “Shakespeare was known for being inappropriate at times. Surely you knew that when you signed up. This is a Shakespeare retelling. Why are you complaining?”

You are technically right, but Shakespeare was known for his clever innuendos, the double entendres that you don’t always catch. He doesn’t typically rub them in your face. True, THE WINTER’S TALE, upon which THE GAP OF TIME is based, is a bit more crude than some of his other plays (at least the ones I’ve read). But trust me when I say THE GAP OF TIME is ten times worse, with 90% less artistry. There is a reason why I rolled my eyes at passages in Shakespeare but got angry at THE GAP OF TIME.

I don’t want to insult the author here, because I can tell she really likes Shakespeare. Good for her. I’m glad she’s found a writing hero. But I think she’s failed to understand certain aspects of his writing. For instance, the fools in Shakespeare’s plays are always the characters who make the most profound statements. Shakespeare was fond of this sort of irony. But Clo, who is supposed to represent the Clown from THE WINTER’S TALE, is merely slow and simple. There is nothing wrong with being slow and simple. But to have the representative of the most wise character be the only one to say the least wise things seems like missing the mark to me. There is also the matter of implying that MiMi does want to have an affair with Xeno, when, in THE WINTER’S TALE, the whole point is that she is absolutely blameless and that her husband is making completely unfounded accusations against her. Liberties like that detract from the power of the story.

It wasn’t that THE GAP OF TIME stayed as horrible as it was in the first 100 pages. While it had more sexual stuff interspersed throughout the remainder, it was squeaky clean in comparison with the junk in the beginning. What bothered me about all the sexual elements, combined, is that they were entirely irrelevant. The fact that Leo is jealous of his wife and her perceived affair is evident enough in his outpouring of anger against his friend Xeno, whom he believes to be sleeping with his wife. It is evident in his suspicion and his paranoia. We don’t need to have him rape his wife out of jealous anger to see that he is being unreasonable and crazy. That part made me especially angry because it is never dealt with. And don’t try to tell me false accusations of an affair and rape are similar, because they aren’t. Sweeping one under the rug might work okay, but please don’t ever treat rape, of any kind, as though it’s not a big deal.

And just overall, I don’t think there was any sort of accurate portrayal of love in this story. Everything seems to boil down to sex in the minds of these characters. It’s their predominant thought, and maybe it’s just a personality thing—maybe I just don’t understand because that’s not how my mind works. But sex and love are not synonymous, and when sex is used as the only evidence that two people love each other, I am likely to be dubious of the author’s understanding of love, at the very least.

There is more. I could probably talk for another thousand words about the other issues that bugged me, like the way the author mistakenly attributes certain observations on human nature to Freud, or the way she offers yet another stereotypical representation of a Jewish character, or the way she clumsily breaks the fourth wall and uses the last portion of the novel to explain her work.

Part of my frustration stems from a matter of taste and opinion, and I know I am being extra negative. I have not felt this indignant about a work of literature in a long while, probably since I read THE CANARY ROOM. (You can find my review here.)

I wanted to throw this book at the wall. I considered cutting it up with a pair of scissors so I wouldn’t have to finish reading it. I almost gave up and DNFed, because I figured it probably wasn’t worth waiting till the end to see if the story would redeem itself. And even if the story got better, I knew that I probably wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. But the problem is, I won it in a giveaway. It’s a $25 hardcover (why are adult books so expensive, anyway?) that I won at my request. Which means someone had to absorb the cost to make sure I got this book, with the understanding that I would pay in return with an honest review. I felt I owed that to the author and the publisher.

So this is my honest review. I absolutely cannot recommend this book. I feel betrayed because the beginning was wonderful and it promised more wonderful, only to follow through with a steaming heap of unpleasantness. There were brief portions where I thought it would redeem itself. There were lines I still liked and remembered. But even those felt forced, as though the author was trying to be profound, and there is a difference between trying to be profound and being profound.

The only way in which THE GAP OF TIME did not waste my time is that I have never written a book review so quickly in my life. Scrivener couldn’t even keep up with how fast I typed the rough draft—it kept freezing.

I’m giving THE GAP OF TIME one star because I can’t give it zero stars. And also, the first chapter was nice, and would have warranted five stars if it were its own work. So maybe this book deserves one star for that one chapter, to make things fair and square.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Gap of Time

I’m a fan of this author. . . .could listen to her words and the way she strings them together for hours (and do!). That said, I must admit to non-engagement with this story. I will need to re-read this in the context of it being part of, in fact, first of, the Hogarth Shakespeare reimagined project. Reading it out of context, that is not applying anything and everything I knew about the play it was ‘reimagining’ left me adrift. I had a difficult time following the motivations and reasons for the characters to do what they did. Phrases, by themselves, on their own, I got that, but trying to tie it all together – well I’m afraid I missed the mark. I will be reading through all of the books in this series, but will do a serious revisit of the Shakespeare work in play before I do.

In a work of reimagination, I would expect that work to stand on its own, next to the work being reimagined (The Winter's Tale). This one isn't doing that for me. I'm sure I will make a second attempt at some point in the future.

It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in’t. (The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, Scene 3, Shakespeare)

[scherzo♫ · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's readable, but compared to Shakespeare's play it's a travesty.
The soul and magic of The Winter's Tale is smashed and crushed like a place devastated by tornado or earthquake.
Shakespeare added humanity to stereotypes. Winterson over-exaggerates stereotypes into grotesque caricatures.
She completely wrecked the ending.

[Eirini Proikaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Και τι είναι η μνήμη αν όχι ένα σχοινί που εκτείνεται στο χρόνο;"

Πολύ μου άρεσε αυτό το βιβλίο!Μπορεί η ιστορία να φαίνεται λίγο υπερβολική,να έχει πολύ πόνο και αρκετή παράνοια αλλά η γραφή της Winterson ρέει,έχει ωραίους διαλόγους,δημιουργεί ωραία ατμόσφαιρα,έχει και χιούμορ και το βιβλίο διαβάζεται πολύ ευχάριστα.
Για όσους δεν έχουν διαβάσει το Χειμωνιάτικο παραμύθι(όπως εγώ),στην αρχή του βιβλίου υπάρχει μια περίληψη.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one. I think Winterson actually managed to get to the emotional core of the story more than the bard himself did. (Is that possible?) It's a tragedy that ends in a comedy, I guess, but Winterson's version does a better job of intertwining the stories over the time gap, I think. Worth reading.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Nearly 3.5) Winterson creates clear counterparts for each of Shakespeare’s characters, often tweaking names so they are still recognizable but a bit more modern. Notably, she opens in the middle, with Shep (Shepherd) discovering Perdita in a faux New Orleans, then fills in backstory for a London financier, a Parisian singer and a video game designer. “The Day of Celebration,” my favorite part, is an excellent 40-page section that could function as a stand-alone story. It’s the sheep-shearing festival in the original, but has been translated into Shep’s 70th birthday party. Especially here, the dialogue is great, and all the different interactions crackle with possibility.

Inventive and true to the themes and imagery (time, adoption; angels, bears, statues) of the original, but ultimately this adds little to one’s experience of Shakespeare. I’ll be hoping for better things from the rest of the series. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on The Tempest, Howard Jacobson on The Merchant of Venice and Anne Tyler on The Taming of the Shrew, among others.

See my full review at The Bookbag.

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful modern retelling of Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale', a story of revenge and forgiveness.

'And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman's fortune or one man's loss. And we can't know the lives of others. And we can't know our lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen.'

'It takes so little to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.'

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, deep, irreverent, dirtier than I expected (not sure why, this is Shakespeare retelling after all!) I felt on the edge of my seat in some scenes despite knowing in advance who would die, who would live, who would get back together. I appreciated that the author had chosen one of Shakespeare’s older plays here where the tragedy resolves into a theme of forgiveness, unlike his earlier plays that usually led to jealousy or vengeance.

Forgiveness is a word like tiger --- there’s footage of it and verifiably it exists but few of us have seen it close and wild or known it for what it is.

At the end the author comments that “A Winter’s Tale” is like a rewrite of Othello where no one dies and the one who ‘loves too much’ is reconciled to his love in the end. I appreciated that, especially since Othello happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play (though I struggle to explain why). I appreciate too, that the villain in this play and novel is apparent and unexcused, unlike say, Othello or Macbeth who both have patsies to hate instead of their own deluded, hateful selves (Iago and Lady Macbeth). Here, Leo is blinded by irrational jealousy and hate and destroys everything he loves, and there is no one to blame but himself.
The themes here are so human: our innate loneliness, the common singularity of falling in love, loss of loved ones, the struggle to understand each other, the irretrievability of the past and one’s past mistakes… and they are beautifully (and modernly) evoked. The updated kings are; Leo – hedge fund conjurer of money out of thin air & Xeno – creator of artful video games meant to cause connection and storytelling. MiMi, the wife of Leo is the attained unattainable chanteuse with an unborn daughter of uncertain (to Leo) paternity. Later Perdita is the grown daughter, herself a beautiful singer and Zel, the son of Xeno destined to find her again.
There is a happy ending, but it’s tinged with a spot of doubt as the narrator repeatedly points out (especially via the lead men’s perspectives) the struggle for men and women to understand each other and to truly live together.

A couple walked by fighting about the dry-cleaning. You meet someone and you can’t wait to get your clothes off. A year later and you’re fighting about the dry-cleaning. The imperfections are built into the design.

I felt that the video game and most of the sex distracted from the story. I think the game was meant to serve as a device for visualizing the destructive force that had separated and broken several of the characters but it didn’t connect me to them. Considering that Winterson found so many other ways to update her story to the modern age while still maintaining the characters’ personas and the scene’s drama (carjacking instead of wild storm killing the deliverer of the infant e.g.), this was disappointing. When Winterson uses music as a device instead (usually for bringing people together), it rings truer. As for the sex, this is perhaps an update to the ground-level content from Shakespeare (I haven’t read the play but I kind of doubt this, the scenes with Autocylus and Zel or Clo seemed more in that vein), but instead of humor, it usually brought pathos. The exception is Zel and Perdita, the two lovers at the center of the fateful resolution.

It isn’t perfect, as mentioned above, but it is deeply felt and a joy when the expected happy ending arrives. Great characters abound. (Leo’s partner Pauline is probably one of my new all-time favorites). And there is humor (as any decent Shakespeare requires) amidst all this emotion.

“Remember the story of Oedipus?”
“Eddy who?”
“Guy who murdered his father and married his mother.”
“Was that on Fox News?”
…..
“…. They had no idea about viruses in those days. Plagues were sent from the gods.”
“They said that about AIDS. Even I knew it was a stupid thing to say and I’m no doctor.”
“One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesn’t happen to everyone.”

And that sir, is a play that called for an encore.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am not intimmately familiar with either Jeanette Winterson or The Winter's Tale, but I was intrigued behind the idea of the Hogarth Shakespeare collection and was able to read this through NetGalley.

Obviously, The Gap of Time modernizes Shakespeare's work, changing the setting, some character names, and other superficial details, but retaining the driving themes of the original (the summary of which is included in the beginning of Winterson's story, for reference.) It goes like this: a wealthy and powerful man -- in Shakespeare, a king; in Winterson, an entrepreneur -- becomes irrationally convinced of his pregnant wife's infidelity, and upon the birth of the child sends her away, believing she is not his daughter. The trauma of all of these events results in both the estrangement of the couple as well as the loss of their first born son, while the daughter grows up blissfully unaware of her connections to this broken family. Eventually, through some fated coincidences many years later, the key players are reunited in tentative forgiveness, with the suggestion of rekindled and growing new relationships.

The first part of Winterson's adaptation is very difficult to read. Consumed by rage, Leo has an utterly grotesque inner monologue filled with any and all imaginable epithets one could direct toward one's wife or queer best friend. When his emotion turns murderous and abusive, it's nigh impossible to not completely loathe the guy. Personally, I believed that he doesn't deserve the redemption that is coming to him, he made me so disgusted.

After the flash forward, where we meet Perdita, Leo's grown daughter, the acerbity of the writing mellows a bit and the story becomes rather sweet. The shift in tone is exemplified by interactions between Perdita and her adoptive family, who are goodhearted and clearly love her. You know that, even if Leo's paranoid conspiracy theory-based meltdown had never occurred, Perdita would still be better off being raised by the adoptive father she ended up with. And that's one exploration of the story that occurs after they are reunited: Leo's values and philosophy on life are interrogated:

"Leo, you're one of the guys who makes the world the way it is. I'm one of the guys who lives in the world the way it is... And money and power being the most important things to you, you reckon they are the most important things to those that don't have them. Maybe to some people they are -- because the way guys like you have fixed the world, only a lottery ticket can change it for guys like me. Hard work and hope won't do it anymore. The American Dream is done.
"I guess we're different there, you and me, Leo, because owning doesn't mean that much to me. Seems like it's one of the miseries of the world."

I don't have much to say in the way of criticism. The Gap of Time is a provocative, well-executed short story that is respectful of its source material. For my own taste, Leo's repulsiveness was a bit heavy-handed, but I believe the histrionics may have themselves been a nod to the high drama inherent in Shakespeare's tragedies (not that Winter's Tale is considered one, but it does share some dark, psychological characteristics with the classic tragedies.)

After seeing some of the other authors participating in the Hogarth collection and encountering Winterson's successful attempt here, I'm looking forward to reading the other adaptations.

[Joy (joyous reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're not familiar with Hogarth Shakespeare (as I was before I read this book), it is a project that commissioned some prolific authors to rewrite Shakespeare's plays in a way that will appeal to modern readers. It is a massive undertaking for two reasons: one, they're to rewrite the plays into novels, and two, consider the author of the original works.

THE WINTER'S TALE.

The first book in this series is a retelling of The Winter's Tale. In the original work, it tells the story of King Leontes, his pregnant wife Hermoine, and King Polixenes. King Leontes, in a jealous fit, accused his wife and Polixenes of having an affair. But of course, the two weren't having an affair, and the baby was his. In a series of event, Leontes will lose his wife, their son, and the baby. King Leontes exiled the baby to a faraway land never to be seen again.

The child was found by a shepherd and his simple-minded son. Years passed, Perdita grew up to be a beautiful woman. Enter Florizel, son of King Polixenes. While pretending to be a commoner, Florizel fell in love with Perdita. And as they grew closer, the journey they would both embark will take them back to how it all started.

THE GAP OF TIME.

We all know Bill Shakespeare's writing was not made for the masses. I've always found it difficult to understand even watching it in its film version. As a reader, I know how important it is to have some knowledge of his works. Because missing out on Shakespeare is almost an unforgivable sin. Winterson revamped the story to make it more palatable to plebian readers such as I. For one the story was set in the modern times. Leo [Leontes] and Xeno [Polixenes] are wealthy tech executives who dabbled in gaming and real estate. MiMi [Hermoine] is a French singer in Paris. There is also an arch of a gay relationship between Leo and Xeno during their teen years. Now, I'm not familiar with the original work, so I don't know whether or not this was even implied. Xeno, however, never outgrew that love. In fact, he was in love with both Leo and MiMi.

The interesting part of this story is how each of their pasts would come to a head. And this is all spear-headed by the relationship between Perdita (the missing baby), and Zel (Florizel). At one point, Perdita even thought that they were siblings. And knowing that this was a Shakespeare work, I couldn't put it past him. So I had to go back and check the original work to make sure that it was nothing but confusion.

I also enjoyed Perdita's relationship with her adopted family. It was obvious to Perdita that they were not her biological family because they were Blacks and she was White. But their relationship was one of the sincerest, loveliest familial dynamics I've ever read in a while. Shep considered Perdita a blessing in their life even though the circumstances of how she came to them wasn't all that ideal.

IN RETROSPECT.

I'm so excited to read the rest of the books in this series. Margaret Atwood had signed on to do The Tempest. Anne Tyler is doing The Taming of the Shrew - which is probably a favourite of mine all thanks to 10 Things I Hate About You. I've never been more thankful for the powers that be that instigated this project. Because now I have a chance to get to know Shakespeare's works in such a way that I can easily understand.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should note that Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale has never been a favorite. I've always wanted Leo to die. Yeah, I know it's about forgiveness, but still.

So, this is okay. There are parts of that are wonderful. Like where Leo is watching MiMi and co via webcam. His reaction is nothing but an attack on rape culture and is masterfully done.

Yet, sometimes, it doesn't quite work. Having the American characters use words like knickers and spelling tires - tyres, seems off. It was good, just not great.

[Angelica Koumara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το "Χειμωνιάτικο Παραμύθι" είναι μία ιστορία ζήλειας, εκδίκησης, απώλειας και στο τέλος συγχώρεσης. Σε αυτό το βιβλίο η Γουιντερσον έδωσε μία νέα μορφή στους χαρακτήρες του Σέξπιρ. Ήταν καλογραμμένο, με μοντέρνα στοιχεία και μικρές, έξυπνες συνδέσεις με το αρχικό κείμενο. Η μετάφραση αρκετά καλή αν και ίσως στα αγγλικά θα ήταν καλύτερο. Αλλά γενικά ένα ωραίο βιβλίο.

[Maria Roxana · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Și lumea merge mai departe, fără să-i pese de bucurie sau disperare sau de norocul unei femei ori de pierderea unui bărbat. Și nu putem cunoaște viețile altora. Și nu ne putem cunoaște propriile vieți dincolo de amănuntele pe care le putem gestiona. Iar lucrurile care ne schimbă pentru totdeauna se întâmplă fără ca noi să știm că se vor întâmpla.
Și momentul care arată precum celelalte este cel în care inimile sunt sfâșiate sau vindecate. Iar timpul care curge atât de egal și de sigur aleargă nebunește în afara ceasurilor lumii. E nevoie de atât de puțin timp pentru a schimba o viață și e nevoie de o viață întreagă ca să înțelegi schimbarea.”

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is probably not another writer who could make me read a Shakespeare play. Jeanette Winterson, whose writing always excites me, has filled the role that no English teacher ever played for me during my school days. Because I had not realized she included a summary of The Winter’s Tale at the beginning of her retelling, I read the play first and enjoyed it more than I expected I would. That in turn enhanced the sheer fun of reading The Gap of Time.

It is a story that works on the equation of jealousy plus power equals bad stuff happens. Leo, an unemployed banker following the crash of 2008, was so talented at making money that he started his own hedge fund in the middle of the ensuing recession and became disgustingly wealthy. Then he convinced the beautiful and talented MiMi, famous songstress, to marry him. Yet within eight years, just before the birth of their second child, Leo fell into an insane jealous conviction that MiMi and his best friend were having an affair, meaning the baby was not his. Using his wealth and power he proceeded to ruin numerous lives and lose everyone he cared about.

In The Winter’s Tale, Leontes is a King, Hermione is his queen, and Polixenes, also a King, is Leontes’s childhood friend. Leo is the modern equivalent of royalty, a king of finance. Xeno creates brilliant games and takes the video sport to sophisticated new levels of content. He is also gay, in love with both Leo and MiMi, though not cuckolding Leo. It’s complicated, as we say in modern parlance. A tragic love triangle as they said in the 1600s.

Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, spiced his play with humor. I don’t know enough about his oeuvre to speak of his talent for tragicomedy. I do know that Jeanette Winterson ran with the comic bits, making use of the dark hilarity in our modern era. As far as philosophizing about tragedy and time, her talent is equal to the bard’s.

Within the first twelve pages she is slinging around sentences like this: “You think you’re living in the present but the past is right behind you like a shadow.” “What is memory anyway but a painful dispute with the past?” “I discover that grief means living with someone who is not there.”

The Winter’s Tale has a dearth of back story. Winterson provides us with plenty: how Leo and Xeno became best friends in boarding school after some severe maternal rejection; how Leo met MiMi and got Xeno to play Cupid during his days of courting; how the man who ended up raising Perdita, the daughter Leo gave away, came to be the wise and cool dude he is; and a few more. Brilliantly done because the somewhat unlikely happy ending in the play becomes a believable outcome in the novel.

I could say more. It is a complex tale and several other characters help make it so. An abundance of delectable scenes, snappy dialogue, and digressions about the vagaries of time, make the reader feel she is watching a Shakespeare play. I don’t want to spoil the magic.