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I was winning until I met your gaze…
Gambling at the roulette tables of the Kursaal, Gwendolen Harleth glances up to meet Daniel Deronda’s arresting stare. Striking, selfish and wilful, she is at that moment the mistress of her destiny. Years later, the flawed heroine and true protagonist of Eliot’s last great novel writes her confessional to the man whose ever-imagined gaze has prevailed throughout her life. The egotism, naiveté and sensitivity of her blazing youth is evoked with bittersweet wisdom; a passionate remembrance of the events leading up to the marriage that broke her spirit, and the loss of the man who broke her heart.
Moving, original and elegant, this is a bravura re-imagining of the life of one of English literature’s most multi-faceted and contradictory heroines.
Gambling at the roulette tables of the Kursaal, Gwendolen Harleth glances up to meet Daniel Deronda’s arresting stare. Striking, selfish and wilful, she is at that moment the mistress of her destiny. Years later, the flawed heroine and true protagonist of Eliot’s last great novel writes her confessional to the man whose ever-imagined gaze has prevailed throughout her life. The egotism, naiveté and sensitivity of her blazing youth is evoked with bittersweet wisdom; a passionate remembrance of the events leading up to the marriage that broke her spirit, and the loss of the man who broke her heart.
Moving, original and elegant, this is a bravura re-imagining of the life of one of English literature’s most multi-faceted and contradictory heroines.
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Reviews
'When Eliot drops the thread, Souhami comes into her own ... Eliot neglected to find a proper home for Gwendolen. Souhami, with sympathy, mischief and imagination, gives her one' Boyd Tonkin, Independent.
Elegant . . . Captivating . . . Enchanting
When Eliot drops the thread, Souhami comes into her own. Liberated, Gwendolen joins a Victorian bohemia of authors, artists, reformers and sexual rebels. Eliot neglected to find a proper home for Gwendolen. Souhami, with sympathy, mischief and imagination, gives her one
A bold feat of imagination ... The result is intriguing and moving ... a powerful meditation upon the nature of creativity. Both an arresting interpretation of George Eliot's work and a compelling fiction in its own right, Gwendolen will be whispering in my ear next time I go back to Daniel Deronda, reminding me to look for the story behind the story
An act of breathtaking chutzpah: Gwendolen Harleth stands alongside Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Edith Wharton's Lily Bart as one of the most compelling characters in the history of the novel, and to assume creative responsibility for her is not for the faint-hearted ... It is intriguing, and it is brave