A review by __nyx__
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

4.0

‘It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change. […] Everything, but she couldn’t say it. Too much, but she couldn’t explain it. Enough, but she couldn’t understand why what she wanted seemed to have happened and she didn’t want it at all. Soon […] we have to go to work, have children, make homes, make dinner, make love. We will have dreams but will they come true?

[…] Love. The size of it. The scale of it. Unimaginable. Vast. Your love for me. My love for you. Our love for one another. Real. Yes.’

The Gap of Time it took between starting and finishing this book is unforgivable. But so is the play of Shakespeare’s The Winter Tale. But this is only my opinion. And as ironic as it is, as an English teacher, I hate Shakespeare. I don’t quite enjoy his tanglement of words. I think as I’ve grown older I’ve grown more fond of the slowness of love and its language and the way it carries you and I feel like the language of Shakespeare is too clunky hence. And it pains me to see so many of Winterson’s gorgeous, picturesque words dancing on the page but in the midst of a Shakespeare take. But for her, I respect it. And for her, I read on until the last word. And despite my lack of interest in Shakespeare and my lack of understanding of the intertextuality hence, I don’t even care. I don’t care because Winterson’s words made it better. They make everything better.

They make love more beautiful than love is. And love is very beautiful.

Time and connection and love explored timelessly.

A must.

Especially if you cannot stand Shakespeare.