Gwendolen
A Novel
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
I was winning until I met your gaze...
Gambling at the roulette tables of the Kursaal, Gwendolen Harleth glances up to meet Daniel Deronda's arresting stare. Striking, selfish and wilful, she is at that moment the mistress of her destiny. Years later, the flawed heroine and true protagonist of Eliot's last great novel writes her confessional to the man whose ever-imagined gaze has prevailed throughout her life. The egotism, naiveté and sensitivity of her blazing youth is evoked with bittersweet wisdom; a passionate remembrance of the events leading up to the marriage that broke her spirit, and the loss of the man who broke her heart.
Moving, original and elegant, this is a bravura re-imagining of the life of one of English literature's most multi-faceted and contradictory heroines.
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.
