This book is for anyone who enjoys historical stories written from the perspective of the women who have previously been left out. Think Ariadne or The Silence of the Women, this is a woman reclaiming her space and telling her story.
I was very grateful to receive a proof copy of this novel from Lucy Zhou. Thank you, Lucy!
I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear’s wife. I am here.
Learwife
Where to start with this book? It is a book about life, grief and what it is is to be human. Written from the perspective of King Lear’s wife, who was only referred to a few times by Shakespeare in the play, in this novel we learn her story.
Banished by Lear to live in an Abbey for a crime that is never explained to her, fifteen years later she learns that he has been killed and her three daughters are also dead. She describes her difficult relationships with her elder two daughters, Goneril and Regan, and how she treated them to prepare them for life in court. We also learn that she was separated from her youngest daughter, Cordelia, when she was only a few days old.
I wonder if the land knows. That the press of a single king is no longer on it, and so it is split from its brothers. What God imparts to stone of its ownership, to water.
The collection of lands was Lear’s great aim, in the years before my exile. Rich soil, forests we would never see, stretching to the necks of mountains. He studded his countries with castles and we moved between them through the seasons: rich summers in the cooler north, among heather and the bee-wild slopes, then out for winter, in wide pale palaces that swam with sun. The populace felt us move in rhythm, there were crowds on every road: to be thrown favours, coins, sugar. Women stood among the flowering gorse with their heads covered and sang for us, in the dark evening.
To be in Lear’s country, to be one of his people’s! They will not see his like again.
Learwife
The book so beautifully and poetically explores grief and all the emotions that are felt within it, from love and anger, to hate and despair. She wants to know how he died and where her daughters are buried, but no one seems to have any answers. She also wants to find out what happened to her most loyal friend, Kent, who she has not seen since she came to the Abbey. And what will become of her now Lear is dead, will his enemies seek to find her?
Lear, you old ghoul, softening down in the soil, sprouting a mushroom out of your eye, listen: you have tried to do me wrong, you thought you’d bury me. After all I gave. And look how I took your punishment and made it thicken, made it bud down to the root with new growth, furred and greening.
Learwife
I haven’t seen or read King Lear and I don’t think you need to be able to enjoy this book. JR Thorp creates such a full world within this novel that you come to know all the relationships between the characters and get a sense of what they were like in the play. Goneril and Regan’s cruelty, for example, is demonstrated in their treatment of their mother’s favourite dogs. It has made me curious, however, and I think I will try to see the play in the future.
But the thing I will remember most about this book is her voice. So strong and vivid: it is told lyrically at some points, bursting with emotion, and sparsely at others as she recovers from the news of the deaths. She is character unlike any other.
Luggage & Scribble 