- Published: 1 October 2015
- ISBN: 9781473512085
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 320
The Gap of Time
The Winter’s Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)
- Published: 1 October 2015
- ISBN: 9781473512085
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 320
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
Rowan Williams, New Statesman
Winterson’s stage, like that of Shakespeare, is filled with wonders
Frances Wilson, 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.
Allan Massie, 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.
Andrew Dickson, 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.
Lucasta Miller, 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.
Hannah Beckerman, 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.
Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday
Astonishing.
Elle
Smart and witty... Compelling, entertaining and elegant
Sarah Crown, 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.
Nicola Wilson, Irish News
There are passages here so concisely beautiful they give you goosebumps
Observer
One of the most gifted writers working today... A shining delight of a novel... Winterson's great gift is in capturing the emotional heft of her stories with sentences that hum along, beautiful, unexpected and swift. Winterson wrestles wonderfully with a perplexing text and emerges with a complicated, satisfying and contemporary tale that stands wholly on its own.
New York Times
With a few deft strokes Winterson creates Shakespeare’s characters in contemporary clothing keeping me in suspense throughout. It is a triumph and a good omen for this ambitious new project.
Daily Express
Reading Jeanette Winterson takes you to a place where words have power, and are capable of transforming people's lives.
Alex Klineberg, Huffington Post
[A] witty and funky adaptation
Woman's Way
Winterson largely and ingeniously stays faithful to Shakespeare’s magical realist plot… and captures the play’s quizzical, questioning, redemptive spirit while remaining impressively true to her own.
CA, four stars, Metro
Wonderfully imaginative
Juliet Nicholson, Evening Standard
Spins through an exhilarating array of genres. The sensational opening chapter enmeshes the reader in a rollercoaster ride of tragedy, comedy, thriller, fantasy, chicklit, plus a few pages of raunchy sex
David Fothergill, Guardian
The Gap of Time takes nothing away from The Winter's Tale. If anything it might add to it, or at least to its resonance and mystery. It is an impressive achievement, especially as Winterson manages the contradictions of comedy and tragedy in a way which suits both their modern likelihood and their moral implications
Mary Leland, Irish Examiner
A witty retelling.
Joanna Kavenna, Literary Review
Her new story retains the essence of Shakespeare, but filters his comedy and sentiment through feminism and technology.
The Culture Trip
Filled with her wit and seriously thought-provoking ideas, Winterson’s writing is a pleasure… This is a well told, beautiful, magical and wonderfully evocative story which resonates with our contemporary lives.
Eric Page, Gscene
The Gap of Time is an ingenious retelling of The Winter’s Tale… [Winterston] 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… Perhaps most surprising is how readily the plot translates to a modern context; how plausible this version seems, for all its knowing self-reference.
Stephanie Merritt, Guardian
Those addicted to Shakespeare’s marvellous depiction of jealousy, guilt and teenage joie de vivre will be identifying and falling in love again with characters and their fateful lives… Plunge into The Gap of Time as a fresh, vibrant example of contemporary writing with an original, thought-provoking storyline… The Gap of Time is a top-quality novel.
Phillip Fisher, British Theatre Guide
Stylish and accomplished.
Peter Carty, International Business Times
The Winter’s Tale meets House of Cards. Engrossing and ingenious, it deftly rewrites Shakespeare’s lamentation of destructive jealousy as an indictment of deregulated capitalism.
Peter Smith, Times Higher Education
Winterson charms with her playful translation of the cast from the courts of Sicily and Bohemia into our own quotidian life
Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books
Vibrates with echoes of Shakespeare’s original.
I
Ambitious.
Sunday Times
There is a lovely, lilting cadence to the novel… Stylishly done…. Winterson manages against the odds to keep us gripped.
Sarah Crown, Guardian
Winterson is on sparkling form in this highly intelligent and daringly imaginative reworking of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale... Witty, clever and bold.
Mail on Sunday
Winterson is incapable of being dull, and The Gap Of Time is a fitting addition to her uniquely inventive catalogue.
Ellis O'Harrison, Irish Independent
She deftly captures all the magic and raw emotion of the original.
Irish Times