A review by berlinbibliophile
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

4.0

I love Shakespeare's plays, and his Winter's Tale is the first one I saw performed, at the Globe in London. Back then, I was quite young and my English was just barely good enough to understand the plot. Nonetheless, it was a magical experience that made me fall in love with live theatre forever. So I was very happy when I got Jeanette Winterson's reworking of the story for Christmas. I think that she translates the essentials of the Bard's characters into the modern world seamlessly, and that her update of the setting works very well. The frustration caused by the open ending, in which terrible people are suddenly forgiven, is native to the source material and thus forgivable. The clear, definite ending (or, indeed, anything definite) was never Winterson's interest, and she uses the malleability of events here to meditate upon and experiment with time, the same way she treated space in Sexing the Cherry. Overall a great book.