Synopses & Reviews
"A bold feat of imagination . . . . Intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the womans interior experience . . . and a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliots work and a compelling fiction in its own right." —Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in MiddlemarchIn an astonishing unsent love letter, a 19th-century Englishwoman looks back at her formative years, when she fell in love with one man but married another—the richest bidder—to save her family
Gwendolen Harleth, an exceptionally beautiful upper-class Englishwoman, is gambling boldly at a resort when she catches the eye of a handsome, pensive gentleman. His gaze unnerves her, and she loses her winnings. The next day, she learns that her widowed mother and younger sisters, for whom she is financially responsible, have lost their familys fortune. As a young woman in the 1860s with only her looks to serve her, Gwendolens options are few, so when Henleigh Grandcourt, a wealthy aristocrat, proposes to her, she accepts, despite her discovery of an alarming secret about his past.
During their marriage, Grandcourt is psychologically and physically brutal to her, shattering her confidence. Gwendolen begins to encounter the alluring gentleman from the resort—Daniel Deronda—in her social circles, but Grandcourt, cold and calculating, takes pains to isolate her from everything she loves. Gwendolens desperation nearly overcomes her, until an unexpected turn of events suddenly liberates her from Grandcourts tyranny and leaves her financially independent. Newly free, but riddled with insecurity and desire, Gwendolen must take painful steps to shape a life that has not gone according to plan.
Gwendolen and her world, originally creations of George Eliot, are inhabited and brought to sympathetic and nuanced life in this irresistible debut novel by Diana Souhami, an award-winning British biographer.
Review
In
Gwendolen, Diana Souhami performs a bold feat of imagination: what would happen if George Eliots final novel were retold from the perspective of its beautiful, complicated, circumscribed heroine?
The result is intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the womans interior experience that lies untold behind the mans journey to fulfillment, and a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliots work and a compelling fiction in its own right,
Gwendolen will be whispering in my ear next time I go back to
Daniel Deronda, reminding me to look for the story behind the story.
—Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch
Review
“In Gwendolen, Diana Souhami performs a bold feat of imagination: what would happen if George Eliots final novel were retold from the perspective of its beautiful, complicated, circumscribed heroine? The result is intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the womans interior experience that lies untold behind the mans journey to fulfillment, and a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliots work and a compelling fiction in its own right, Gwendolen will be whispering in my ear next time I go back to Daniel Deronda, reminding me to look for the story behind the story.” —Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch
“In her first novel, highly regarded biographer Diana Souhami . . . gives Eliots beautiful, headstrong anti-heroine her own first-person narrative. This is an act of breathtaking chutzpah . . . to assume creative responsibility for [Gwendolen] is not for the faint-hearted . . . . It is intriguing, and it is brave.” —The Guardian
“Souhami takes to the form as nimbly as galloping Gwendolen might to a fast hunter over bumpy ground. . . . [And] the novel truly catches fire when Eliot's gaps and silences open the door to re-invention. . . . When Eliot drops the thread, Souhami comes into her own. . . . Eliot neglected to find a proper home for Gwendolen. Souhami, with sympathy, mischief and imagination, gives her one.” —The Independent
“The story is strong and there is much in here to appeal both to lovers of the original and to new readers.” —We Love This Book Book of the Week
“As Souhami is the author of 12 critically acclaimed nonfiction and biography books . . . expect good writing and authentic detail.” —Library Journal
About the Author
Diana Souhami is the author of 12 critically acclaimed nonfiction and biography books, including Selkirks Island (winner of the Whitbread Biography Award), The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography), the bestselling Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter (winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Gertrude and Alice, and Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art. She lives in London.