
The Gap of Time
William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale Retold: A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Penelope Rawlins
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Mark Bazeley
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Ben Onwukwe
About this listen
The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
©2015 Jeanette Winterson (P)2015 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Absolute intelligent inquisitive humble reveal!!
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12 Bytes
- How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 12 Bytes, the New York Times best-selling author of Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson draws on her years of thinking and reading about artificial intelligence in all its bewildering manifestations. In her brilliant, laser focused, uniquely pointed, and witty style of storytelling, Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, the politics of race and gender, and computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now.
-
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- Arkangel Shakespeare
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Sinead Cusack, Ciaran Hinda, Eileen Atkins, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
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Performance
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Story
King Leontes of Sicilia is seized by sudden and terrible jealousy of his wife Hermione, whom he accuses of adultery. He believes the child Hermione is bearing was fathered by his friend Polixenes, and when the baby girl is born he orders her to be taken to some wild place and left to die. Though Hermione's child escapes death, Leontes' cruelty has terrible consequences. Loss paves the way for reunion, and life and hope are born out of desolation and despair.
-
-
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial North of England and finds herself embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age, and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household dissolves. Jeanette’s insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind - and on reporting them with wit and passion - makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving passage into adulthood.
-
-
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jeanette Winterson’s bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. This memoir is the chronicle of a life’s work to find happiness. It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser drawer; about growing up in a north England industrial town in the 1960s and 1970s; and about the universe as a cosmic dustbin.
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The Lost Bookshop
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What you should know before listening...
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By: Noah Hawley
Critic reviews
An NPR Best Book of the Year Selection
"The Gap of Time takes the play’s themes of love, jealousy and estrangement and spins them into a taut contemporary tale."--New York Times
“Hogarth leads off the series with one of the most gifted writers working today, Jeanette Winterson, taking on the formidable ‘Winter’s Tale,’ and the result is a shining delight of a novel…. Winterson wrestles wonderfully with a perplexing text and emerges with a complicated, satisfying and contemporary tale that stands wholly on its own, despite the Bard’s significant shadow. But then again, show me a novelist who isn’t under that shadow. For that reason, and because Winterson makes the cover business book easy, I imagine many novelists are salivating for chance to write the next book in this promising new series.”--New York Times Book Review
What listeners say about The Gap of Time
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Karen
- 06-07-21
Should have used an African-American female narrator
The story was wonderful, and for the most part well-written, but definitely did not take into consideration an American audience. Perdita, who spent her entire life in Louisiana, would never have said “lift” instead of “elevator” or “torch” instead of “flashlight”.
To make matters worse, the British narrator got every single American accent wrong: Perdita was given an Appalachian accent like Dolly Parton instead of the Louisiana African-American accent of her adoptive father and brother (which the narrator also butchered); and the used car salesman, also from Louisiana, just sounded bizarre—maybe an attempt at a Brooklyn accent? Or Philadelphia? The narration significantly distracted and detracted from the story, which deserves better treatment.
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1 person found this helpful
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- RieRie K
- 08-18-18
Did not capture Shakespeare
This story, especially the part in New Bohemia, was forced and did not capture the emotions that permeate Shakespeare's play. This is only one in the Hogarth series that I found disappointing.
The 2 male narrators are outstanding. The female narrator is horrendous and grating. Her different voices are abysmal.
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- Lucky
- 12-17-21
Pity about the female narrator
She's so hard to listen to. I ended up ordering the paperback and reading her parts. I always wonder how these horrible interpretations get through the final cut.
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- Daniel Crumbo
- 10-28-15
Nice take
I'm a Winter's Tale scholar, so I'm biased about Winterson's interpretive moves. The literary intrusions are a little taxing, and she gets Bohemia all wrong. She nails the melodrama of Sicilia, however. It's not Shakespeare, but it's quite wonderful.
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5 people found this helpful
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- DRVanDyke
- 03-14-16
The men are great
I enjoyed the male readers, but I found the female reader almost insufferable. Great storyline, though, and brilliantly written. Worth a read, particularly if you enjoy Shakespeare and The Winter's Tale.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Stacey
- 07-19-18
A Case for Forgiveness???
As far as adaptations go, this was really well-done. My thoughts is that rape by one's mate is not forgivable. The rape of Hermione was just too graphic and a turn-off. However, Jeanette Winterston is in my heart as a writer and this work, although in the "eye" of Shakepeare, does really work well as a rounding out of her other novels. Soooo connected.
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1 person found this helpful
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- adriab14
- 07-21-17
Good story, poor performance
I am a fan of Winterson and think she did well to retell Shakespeare, but the dialog often fell short of my expectations of her writing. The ending also felt rushed.
The hardest thing about this book for me, though, was the female narrator. Her Southern (US) accent and male interpretations were difficult to listen to. I almost couldn't finish the book when it switched from the male narrators to the female.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Deborah
- 01-07-25
Interesting story poory narrated
While I appreciated the creative re-telling of The Winter's Tale, the narration spoiled this audiobook for me. I don't understand the decision to alternate narrators by chapter, so the same character is voiced by a male narrator in one chapter and a female narrator in the next. Jarring and annoying, especially because the female narrator was not up to the task of the different accents, regional dialects, and convincing male voices. Very disappointing. I'm going to ask for a refund.
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- Dena
- 12-08-15
Loved the story but Narrators were distracting
What did you like best about this story?
I liked the modern version of the story.
How could the performance have been better?
The narration was very distracting. The characters voices depending on who was narrating that section of the book. I wish I would have read this one instead of listening.
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3 people found this helpful