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Loading... The Red Queen (original 2004; edition 2005)by Margaret Drabble
Work InformationThe Red Queen by Margaret Drabble (2004)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  Cecilturtle | Dec 26, 2023 |    )1  Litrvixen | Jun 23, 2022 |  ) srlib12 | Oct 16, 2021 |  ) HelenBaker | Feb 25, 2021 | ) carliwi | Sep 23, 2019 |
 The author's preface claims that she's searching for 'universal transcultural human characteristics'. The trouble with this quest is that you're likely to run with your own culture, amplifying its ethics into universality. Drabble looks at 18th-century Seoul and finds Primrose Hill. She reads a terrifying memoir by a woman with no proper name and sees a counselling case. The past ceases to be strange or beautiful and subsides under a dust of explication.  Despite all Drabble’s efforts with the superglue of her resourceful intelligence, the two halves of this diptych never really cohere. The second half is an entertaining but not all that remarkable novella, part travelogue and part fiction. The first half, on the other hand, as luridly eventful and as stylistically rich as any Jacobean tragedy, shows Drabble in brilliant form. Behind the literary games is an implausible but gorgeously trashy romance. I lapped that up, too - without anyone being the wiser. Rarely has feminist escapism been so stylishly disguised. Notable Lists
Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a centuries-old memoir by a Korean crown princess. An appropriate gift indeed for her impending trip to Seoul, but Barbara doesn't know who sent it. On the plane, she avidly reads the memoir, a story of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. When a Korean man Barbara meets at her hotel offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess, Barbara tours the royal courts and develops a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life. Barbara's time in Korea goes quickly, but captivated by her experience and wanting to know more about the princess, she wonders if her life can ever be the way it was before. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.14)
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Wikipedia in English (2)
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For a book meant to illuminate it is very hermetic, too much for my taste. (