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Loading... The Queen of the Tambourineby Jane Gardam
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Jane Gardam takes us inside Eliza's head and into Eliza's world, a world where nothing you read can be taken on face value. At the end I had to re-assess everything I had read in the light of the information in the last few pages. Often painful and sometimes funny, the novel has the right random and wandering quality to convey what Eliza is going through. ( )Tried to read this one but I couldn't get into it. I didn't find Eliza to be a very sympathetic character and I found it difficult to relate to her. The story is told as a series of letters that she rights to a neighbor, through the first seventy pages there wasn't any other dialogue other than her telling about the happenings around the neighborhood. Beautiful style, but rather confusing after about half way through the book, so that I was worrying more about the unreliable narrator than following the story. Consisting of a series of letters to an estranged acquaintance, our heroine reveals over time a complex personality that is the result of a mysterious past. The story unfolds in poetic descriptions of a life-time of small and large moments that are given equal attention in how they inform an understanding of one's world. Beautifully written prose that has inspired me to write my own letters... 0.105 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0312143982, Paperback)With prose that is vibrant witty and off-the-wall, The Queen of the Tambourine traces the emotional breakdown--and eventual restoration--of Eliza Peabody, a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her prosperous home in present-day South London. The letters Eliza writes to her neighbor, a woman whom she hardly knows, reveal the story of her self-propelled descent into madness. Eliza must reach the very bottom of her inner downward spiral before she can once again find health and serenity. The story of a woman's confrontation with the ideas and realities of sanity, The Queen of Tambourine will delight readers who enjoy the works of Anita Brookner, Sybille Bedford, Muriel Spark, and Sylvia Plath. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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