Gwendolen: A Novel, by Diana Souhami
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Gwendolen: A Novel, by Diana Souhami
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"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.
Gwendolen: A Novel, by Diana Souhami- Amazon Sales Rank: #1921928 in Books
- Brand: Souhami, Diana
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.26" h x .92" w x 5.61" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Review
“In Gwendolen, Diana Souhami performs a bold feat of imagination: what would happen if George Eliot's final novel were retold from the perspective of its beautiful, complicated, circumscribed heroine? The result is intriguing and moving: a fictional recovery of the woman's interior experience that lies untold behind the man's journey to fulfillment, 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, 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
“Subverts expectations . . . . Souhami invents a complex narcissistic interior life for Gwendolen, and she does it with a rhythm of observation and language that stand proudly beside the original. It's possible to love Gwendolen without having read Daniel Deronda-but Souhami cheekily invites comparison by bringing Gwendolen and a fictionalized George Eliot together at the same dinner party.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Audaciously puts a modern spin on a literary classic.” ―Kirkus
“Compelling and humorous . . . . Replete with unexpected plot twists and turns . . . . In reinventing Eliot's classic, Souhami gives us a delightful work of fiction.” ―Star Tribune
“When Gwendolen becomes a widow, Souhami gives her a new and liberated life, one filled with friendship, adventure, and possibility. Even George Eliot purists will find something satisfying in the imagining of a much improved future for one of literature's most troubled heroines. ” ―Booklist
“As Souhami is the author of 12 critically acclaimed nonfiction and biography books . . . expect good writing and authentic detail.” ―Library Journal
“Gwendolen seeks to give a deeper understanding to the flighty, sharp, and wholly self-absorbed girl and does so with sympathy and clarity. Gwendolen's redeeming quality is her own self-loathing; she knows she is a bad person who will be punished for her misdeeds. She resigned to this fate but eventually determined to become a better person for it. . . . A fascinating literary novel that attempts to breathe humanity into one of literature's maligned heroines.” ―Historical Novels Review
“In her first novel, highly regarded biographer Diana Souhami . . . gives Eliot's 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
“Good biography lets the voice of its subject emerge through the writing. Souhami takes her skills in this area and applies them admirably to her fictional protagonist. . . . Souhami's elegant writing provides a captivating voice from the beginning . . . . With strong feminist undertones, Souhami vividly depicts the dangers of an insular mind and how trapped women of that era really were.” ―The Irish Times
“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
About the Author
Diana Souhami is the author of 12 critically acclaimed nonfiction and biography books, including Selkirk's 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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. As the story evolved, so did my interest By Trudie Barreras “Gwendolen”, by Diana Souhami, is a book that I probably would not have read had it not been one of the few offered at that point in time on my “Vine Queue”. And indeed, I was strongly tempted during about the first 100 pages to give it up, with an “I didn’t like it” ranking. That would have been my loss. I’ll admit that I was partly put off by a feeling of inferiority. I have never read George Eliot’s works (I think Silas Marner may have been required when I was in school, but if so I have successfully blanked it out), and in general eschewed “the Classics”. Therefore I’m not sure, but I think Souhami’s style may be a faithful reproduction of the erudition and elaboration of that type of literature.Of course, the first part of the book dwells in agonizing detail about the brutalities of Gwendolen’s husband Grandcourt, and her feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. She was too “moral” to kill him intentionally, but was nevertheless overcome with guilt because she WANTED to. Her infatuation with Deronda was completely incomprehensible to me, given the absolute minimum of actual knowledge about or interaction with him that had occurred. This may have been true to life of the non-liberated Victorian woman, but it didn’t make me even slightly sympathetic with her, just disgusted at the whole situation.However, as the story developed in the second half of the book, and the author wove into her narrative a number of “real” characters from that era and expanded Gwendolen’s horizons in the process, I actually became interested and involved, and ended up enjoying the cultural insights and psychological nuances that the story provided. This is not a novel for someone who desires fast action or a protagonist with great depth and potential, but in many ways Gwendolen is a woman to be enjoyed and admired for the way she did indeed break free of the stifling culture of her time, despite a lack of personal genius or great talent.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful. A depressive, plain read about a plain character By Ashley Mott Gwendolen is a strange book. If I could compare it to something, I would say it is like a musical performance...picture one instrument that starts a song by playing one note. You think "this is strange" but wait for something to change. Then other instruments come in, but they keep playing the same note, holding the same note. Despite the variance in sound type, the tone is the same.That is this book....the tone is the same.When I began reading Gwendolen, I found it very interesting. The book started with a certain tone, and it worked. Depressive, uncertain, yet egocentric feelings permeated most pages, and they made sense because we know quite quickly that we are likely looking back after a relatively easily guessed sorrowful situation has taken place. This tone persists through recollections of that event and period...also understandable. However, what is not understandable is that the same tone continues even after the character of Gwendolen finds a road to recovery...no matter how tentative that recovery may be....it is peppered with interesting characters and times and places that could have afforded a change in the composition and overall greyscale of the book. Even an exciting milestone and turning point Gwendolen experiences manages to feel dry....and the last pages have the same feeling as the first.Gwendolen self-absorbed is the theme of this book, and she manages to stay basically unlikeable throughout the text. I say unlikeable because there is nothing defined about her besides the event and year of her life she lets define her and her stunning physical beauty. However, Gwendolen sees herself as the center of many universes and can never wrap her mind around the fact that other people do not also see this as so.I give this book three stars, because the author is a skilled writer. I'm sure this was a rough undertaking...crafting a book using an existing character in literature and trying to make them more while staying true to a basic essence. I have never read Daniel Deronda, so perhaps I don't have the proper context for understanding why Gwendolen is so plain inside, but one also shouldn't need to read that book to enjoy this one....it should serve, at most, as an accent.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. An unsatisfying literary homage By S. McGee Some literary critics writing about one of George Eliot's less-known novels, featuring one of her most interesting heroines, Gwendolen Harleth, famously suggested that Daniel Deronda should have stuck to telling Gwendolen's tale, rather than trying to tackle two stories at once (those of Gwendolen, and the man she loves in vain, the title character.) Diana Souhami, it seems, has taken that suggestion to heart, and tried to bring Gwendolen to life in a novel dedicated to her so entirely that it is written in the first person, in the form of an epistle to Deronda himself in which Gwendolen reviews her life and her decisions, many of them drawn from the novel and some of which Souhami has made some informed/educated guesses about.A disclaimer: you'll want to stop reading here if you want to read the Eliot novel at some point, without spoilers. For that matter, you shouldn't think of reading THIS novel, if you want to read "Daniel Deronda", because from the very first pages it delivers major spoilers about the fate of that Victorian novel's major characters.The problem with this homage is that it owes too much to Eliot's original. Unlike Longbourn by Jo Baker, in which the author undertook to retell "Pride and Prejudice through the eyes of the servants, we don't get a radical retelling -- indeed, some of the dialog will sound very familiar to those who have read Eliot, and that's because it originated with her book. The perspective is the same -- we get more details of the brutality of Grandcourt, Gwendolen's husband, as is appropriate to a novel written nearly 150 years after the original.There are occasional amusing twists. For instance, Souhami introduces George Eliot herself as a secondary character whom Gwendolen meets at a house party and who "seemed to appraise me with disapproval" and to be very observant. And Souhami takes advantage of the freedom to imagine an afterlife for Gwendolen that I found both interesting and feasible. But neither of these were enough to raise the novel from being more than merely an interesting novelty, alas.It is possible to do a literary homage well, as Jo Baker proved, and as Tom Stoppard managed to accomplish so magnificently with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I don't pout at the idea of having fun with these classics, but I do want them to be able to stand on their own two feet as fascinating and compelling yarns, and Souhami's novel (in spite of her creative imaginings for what happened next to Gwendolen) doesn't rise to that level.
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