Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... The Widow's Tale (2010 original; edición 2010)por Mick Jackson
Información de la obraThe Widow's Tale por Mick Jackson (2010)
A Novel Cure (728) Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Started well and finished well but I got bit impatient in the middle. About three quarters the way through I started to fantasise about a re-write where the protagonist was not identified as man or woman and her husband the same - so it could be marriage of 2 women, 2 men or mixed. I think the essential story of bereavement would work equally well with any of these and it would eliminate the rather trite gender stereotypes that interfere with the tale and expose the interesting dimensions of the book. I don't quite know the best way to put it, but this novel was very human. It's a woman's tale of the time she spent away from home a few months after her husband died. It's honest, touching, sad, and ... well ... human. One of the things that I love the most about it is that there are no knights in shining armour, best chums who lift you out of the muck, or kindly strangers who offer life changing words of wisdom. It's just a woman working things out (or, making things worse) and trying to find some equilibrium after her husband does. Started well and finished well but I got bit impatient in the middle. About three quarters the way through I started to fantasise about a re-write where the protagonist was not identified as man or woman and her husband the same - so it could be marriage of 2 women, 2 men or mixed. I think the essential story of bereavement would work equally well with any of these and it would eliminate the rather trite gender stereotypes that interfere with the tale and expose the interesting dimensions of the book. Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing. A recently widowed woman in her early sixties flees her London home and well-meaning but irritating friends, and rents a cottage in a North Norfolk village, telling no-one where she's gone. There, she gradually works her grief out - all the classic stages of denial, anger, what ifs, depression and finally acceptance. She makes a classic unreliable narrator at first, but as she begins to explore her surroundings and understand her feelings, we gradually learn that there were cracks in her marriage and what caused them. The writing was surprisingly funny - she's quite capable of laughing at herself whilst in the troughs of despond. Although I know some fit and feisty sixty-something women, she felt a decade or so younger than that to me but that is a minor niggle, for I really enjoyed reading it.
Jacksons roman is geen jammerklacht van een door verdriet verteerd drankorgel, maar het gevoelige verslag van een vrouw die het verlies van haar man tracht te verwerken en een nieuwe start probeert te vinden. entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article7110597.ece In keeping with our widow’s interest in the ascetic life, the book itself has an ascetic discipline. The question is whether the writing entirely stands up to the scrutiny that such spareness invites. Sometimes it feels slight. There are a few small resplendent moments, but then the book is about coping with the everyday rather than the miraculous. Perhaps it is all the braver for it. The author's good intentions are unmistakable, but when he strikes false notes he reminds us that it is not enough for a novel to be a feat of empathy, or for an author to be an agony aunt. To leave your reader satisfied you need to pay your dues to fiction's form as well as its content.
A newly-widowed woman has done a runner. She just jumped in her car, abandoned her (very nice) house in north London and kept on driving until she reached the Norfolk coast. Now she's rented a tiny cottage and holed herself away there, if only to escape the ceaseless sympathy and insincere concern. She's not quite sure, but thinks she may be having a bit of a breakdown. Or perhaps this sense of dislocation is perfectly normal in the circumstances. All she knows is that she can't sleep and may be drinking a little more than she ought to. But as her story unfolds we discover that her marriage was far from perfect. That it was, in fact, full of frustration and disappointment, as well as one or two significant secrets, and that by running away to this particular village she might actually be making her own personal pilgrimage. By turns elegiac and highly comical, The Widow's Tale conjures up this most defiantly unapologetic of narrators as she begins to pick over the wreckage of her life and decide what has real value and what she should leave behind. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Antiguo miembro de Primeros reseñadores de LibraryThingEl libro The Widow's Tale de Mick Jackson estaba disponible desde LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
But enough about me! Why should you read this? It's an engaging story. It's told from the widow's point of view, and she interacts with few people so it's largely a monologue of her thoughts, along with her behaviour. And that is done very well. The style fits the story and makes it very engaging. I liked the widow, she was strong but vulnerable; and she was quirky.
I liked that she wasn't rescued in the end. No knight in shining armour or fantastic best friend to save her. She was on her own, and she'll be okay...I think.
The book is written by a man speaking as a woman. I thought it was very well done and mused (yet again) about the arguments around authentic voice. By limiting ourselves, we would have missed this very good book. ( )