Abandon ship, baby. Before it's too late. Jump ship, baby, don't wait. The threat's not yours, it's mine. We're caught in a gap of time.I have never read or seen a production of The Winter's Tale, but knowing that it was the source material for Jeanette Winterson's “cover version”, The Gap of Time, I thoroughly researched Shakespeare's play before opening the book – and in a way I needn't have: Helpfully, Winterson opens the book with a detailed summary of the play. On the other hand, I'm glad that I did look into it myself because that's where I learned two important facts: The Winter's Tale is considered one of the most magical of Shakespeare's plays to see live (with a shocking, fantastical ending); and in its day, the title would have been equivalent to “an old wives' tale” – a signal to the audience that this story might be shocking and fantastical and they shouldn't take the plot too literally. This is important because by rooting her update in reality, Winterson purposefully drains the story of its magic, and in the end, I found it all a little dull. Spoilers to follow (if that's a relevant statement to make about a four hundred year old story).
Sometimes it doesn't matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn't matter if it's night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It's not that time stops or that it hasn't started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime.In Shakespeare's original: When King Leontes of Sicily suspects that his old friend Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, has been having an affair with his pregnant wife, Hermione, Leontes threatens his friend's life, who flees back home. When a daughter, Perdita, is born, Leontes disavows paternity and has the baby abandoned in the wilderness, and after the accidental death of their only other child, Hermione dies of grief. Sixteen years pass, and after having been found and raised by a simple shepherd, Perdita falls in love with Polixenes' son, Florizel, they all return to Sicily, and are reunited with Leontes with much contrition and forgiveness. When they visit a statue of Hermione, the dead queen comes to life and all move forward into a happy ending.
The “cover version”: Leo is a London-based money manager whose actions not only contributed to the 2008 recession, but he was able to massively profit from the aftermath with his new company, Sicilia. He suspects that his old friend, Xeno, has been having an affair with his pregnant wife, MiMi (a French pop star), and when he threatens his friend's life (trying to murder him with a car), Xeno flees back home. When a daughter, Perdita, is born, Leo disavows paternity and has the baby sent to Xeno (but through some credulity-stretching mishaps, the baby ends up being raised by a bar owner named Shepherd). Eighteen years later, Perdita falls in love with Xeno's son, Zel, and they all travel to London so she can meet Leo. There is much contrition and hesitant forgiveness, and while MiMi had gone into hiding after losing both her children, she gives a surprise performance at a charity concert and everyone can hope to move forward towards a happy ending.
And the story fell out stone by stone, shining and held, the way time is held in a diamond, the way the light is held in each stone. And stones speak, and what was silent opens its mouth to tell a story and the story is set in stone to break the stone. What happened happened.Near the end, Winterson interjects her own voice into the story, explaining that The Winter's Tale had been “a private text for me for more than thirty years”. Having been adopted herself, she identifies with Perdita (the “little lost girl”), and having had an unsatisfactory reunion with her own birth family, Winterson would have understood about feelings of abandonment and the improbability of forgiveness. It's weird, then, that her modern day Perdita feels the least developed. At least Leo had enough backstory to explain his maniacal jealousies: Having relished an experimental sexual relationship with the charismatic Xeno at boarding school, it's nearly understandable that seeing Xeno and MiMi together in the now, obviously enjoying each other's company, would have made him jealous of both of them (and especially since it turned out that Xeno and MiMi were a bit in love with each other; if not for their loyalty to Leo...) In my pre-reading, I had learned that there's often a gay subtext to Leontes and Polixenes' relationship, so I'd imagine that aspect of the play would have been part of what made this Shakespeare work so personal to Winterson (as a noted LGBT writer). But as much as she identified with everything – maybe even being the perfect author for reinterpreting this particular play for the Hogarth Shakespeare Series – maybe this literal update of the The Winter's Tale was simply the wrong overall approach.
But.
The past is a grenade that explodes when thrown.
I also found it odd that The Gap of Time name-drops both The Winter's Tale and Jeanette Winterson herself; that people incidentally bring up and discuss Oedipus; that there are lines like, He lifted a toast to Perdita and drank back the whisky like he was Tristan and she was Isolde or Superman is powerful enough to belt the earth like Puck on speed and turn back time: this frequent referencing of ancient myths and Shakespearean works felt overly deliberate and intrusive. On the other hand, I loved everything about the computer game creator Xeno's MMORPG (also called “The Gap of Time”) based on fallen angels from the French poet Gérard de Nerval's dream and subsequent verse; I'd play that game and it added some of the magic and wonder back into the storyline.
And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman's fortune or one man's loss. And we can't know the lives of others. And we can't know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside of the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.This makes my fourth book in the Hogarth project (plus Ian McEwan's semi-related Nutshell), and again, it seems like any attempt to do a straight update of one of Shakespeare's plays as a novel doesn't quite work. A little dull, a little unbelievable, a little too little; I'd rather have seen a statue come to life.
Books in the Hogarth Shakespeare series:
Shylock is My Name
Vinegar Girl
The Gap of Time
Hag-Seed
New Boy
Dunbar
Macbeth
And Related:
Nutshell
