A review by lgiegerich
Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd

2.0

really postmodern and kind of crap. what i really wanted was a historical fiction novel about Thomas Chatterton, a 18th century plagiarist of medieval poetry who committed suicide with arsenic at age 17. this novel posits that he didn't actually die, but lived to write stuff that people then attributed to William Blake and stuff. which is an interesting premise, but it jumps back and forth between the present and the past with minimal connection, and i had absolutely no emotional investment in any of the characters. in fact, i actively hated about 2/3 of them.

the most interesting parts are about the poet George Meredith posing for the famous painting of Chatterton's death, which i saw in the Tate Britain, and which started this whole mess.