Gwendolen
A Novel
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- 12,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
"A bold feat of imagination. . . . Intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the woman's interior experience . . . and a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliot's work and a compelling fiction in its own right."
—Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch
Gwendolen, an exceptionally beautiful, young upper-class Englishwoman, is gambling boldly at a German resort (winning big, then losing just as soundly) when she learns from her twice-widowed mother that their fortune has been lost. The eldest in a family of sisters, Gwendolen is now responsible for all of them, and, though a fine archer and rider, she has little more than her good looks to offer. When an extraordinarily wealthy aristocrat proposes marriage, she accepts, despite her discovery of an alarming secret about his past.
This novel is Gwendolen's passionate later-life letter to the man she did not marry, and reveals what happened across the brutal and transformative years of her early twenties. That she is also the heroine of George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda (and is writing to Deronda) will intrigue and delight legions of Eliot fans, but debut novelist Diana Souhami has brilliantly and movingly breathed fresh life into a classic in ways that will appeal to readers entirely unfamiliar with Eliot's fictions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Souhami's uneven first novel is a love letter from Gwendolen Harleth, protagonist of George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda, to Deronda himself. The first two-thirds of the book tracks Eliot's story. Gwendolen falls in love with the handsome Deronda while gambling, even as his sobering gaze seems to spoil her luck. Discovering that her fortune has been lost and she, her widowed mother, and her half-sisters will soon be destitute, Gwendolen accepts the hand of wealthy Henleigh Grandcourt despite a plea from Grandcourt's mistress. As Grandcourt's cruelty makes her glittering life a private hell, Gwendolen's passion for Deronda persists. She frees herself from Grandcourt in a single dark moment, but Deronda pursues his Jewish identity and another woman, Mira Lapidoth, rather than making a new life with Gwendolen. Unlike Eliot, Souhami portrays Gwendolen as a widow who explores artistic and feminist circles while attempting to find her purpose. Gwendolen even meets the famous "George Eliot," who she finds curiously probing and knowledgeable. The book's final third showcases the historical knowledge that helps make Souhami's nonfiction (Gertrude & Alice) so successful. But reliance on summary and retracing of familiar ground flatten its impact, and and Souhami never fully develops either Gwendolen or her relationship to her creator.
