J. R. Thorp
Autor(a) de Learwife
Obras de J. R. Thorp
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- Australia
- Pequena biografia
- She won a Markievicz Award from the Irish Arts Council in 2021 and was one of The Observer's top 10 debut novelists of 2021. She was shortlisted for the BBC Opening Lines Prize, won the London Short Story Award in 2011, and has been published in the Cambridge Literary Review, Manchester Review, Wave Composition, and elsewhere. She wrote the libretto for the highly acclaimed modern opera Dear Marie Stopes and has had works commissioned by the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and St Paul’s Cathedral, amongst others.
Membros
Resenhas
Listas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 1
- Membros
- 93
- Popularidade
- #200,859
- Avaliação
- 3.5
- Resenhas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 14
If you know the story of King Lear, you know that he has three marriageable daughters at the beginning of the play, yet their mother is mentioned only twice indirectly in the play. When Lear has been rebuffed by his eldest daughter Goneril, he goes to Regan's house. She says that she is glad to see him, and he replies:
Regan, I think you are; I know what reason
I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,
I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb,
Sepulchring an adult’ress.
In the second instance, Lear states that Goneril's unkindness must be proof that she is a bastard. Much has been made by scholars over the fate of the missing wife and mother. J R Thorpe chooses to give her a fate: banishment to a convent for an unknown "crime" that is never stated. As the story begins, she has learned of the deaths of Lear, Cordelia, Goneril and Regan, and she launches into a monologue addressed to the reader. In it, she covers the happy days of her early marriage, her changing relationships with her daughters, her friendship with Kent, her life in the convent. The problem is that on audio, it all sounds the same: like a complaint seething with anger. One note, both vocally and emotionally, gets pretty monotonous. I just could not stick with it for very long. Additionally, it made me unsympathetic to the character and really uninterested in her fate. If I had to listen to that harpy all day long, I'd want to lock her up, too! So I'll admit that I ended up "listening" to the book but not really listening to it; I turned it on while doing other things on the computer. I probably missed a lot of good stuff, but I just couldn't help it. At some point, I may pick this one up in print or on ebook (but probably not as there are too many good books waiting on my shelf). Two shaky stars for the concept and for Stevenson's efforts.
(A side note on audiobooks: I that find I prefer to create the voices of characters in my own mind from what I have read. It's getting harder and harder for a reader to please me; so often they are "performing" a character rather than BEING one. And the wrong voice can ruin a book for me. Lately I've been sticking to nonfiction on audio--biographies and memoirs, histories, politics, etc. The reader doesn't matter quite so much in those situations.)… (mais)