The Gap of Time cover art

The Gap of Time

The Winter’s Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

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About this listen

‘I saw the strangest sight tonight.’


New Bohemia. America. A storm. A black man finds a white baby abandoned in the night. He gathers her up – light as a star – and decides to take her home.


London. England. After the financial crash. Leo Kaiser knows how to make money but he doesn’t know how to manage the jealousy he feels towards his best friend and his wife. Is his newborn baby even his?

New Bohemia. 17 years later. A boy and a girl are falling in love but there’s a lot they don’t know about who they are and where they come from.


Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale vibrates with echoes of the original but tells a contemporary story where Time itself is a player in a game of high stakes that will either end in tragedy or forgiveness. It shows us that however far we have been separated, whatever is lost shall be found.

 Classics Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction England Winter

Critic reviews

She makes us read on, our hearts in our mouths, to see how a twice-told story will turn out this time
The intricacy with which Winterson has plotted her novel against each Shakespearean detail will delight readers familiar with the original … it’s part of a vision of a world in which past, present, and future are lived simultaneously, original and adaptation existing in the same moment.
A book of considerable beauty… Winterson’s fiction is a fine invitation into this deeply Shakespearean vision of imagination as the best kind of truth-telling (Rowan Williams)
Winterson’s stage, like that of Shakespeare, is filled with wonders (Frances Wilson)
Winterson is faithful to both the narrative and the spirit of the play, while transposing it to an utterly different and modern setting… There is lightness here, in the frisky prose and the author’s delight in invention, but you are never free of the awareness of dark shadows where danger and corruption lie in wait. (Allan Massie)
Clever and beautiful...it soars
A deeply felt, emotionally intelligent and serious novel, which resists easy answers and yet expresses the hope that human beings can muddle through, and that bad pasts can have good outcomes... Pulsates with such authenticity and imaginative generosity that I defy you not to engage with it. (Andrew Dickson)
The Winter’s Tale, one of the late, 'problem' plays, is about loss, remorse and forgiveness, and the nature of time. Winterson has captured all this with respect and affection for Shakespeare’s text, and made it new with her own bold and poetic prose and her insights into love and grief. There are passages here so concisely beautiful they give you goosebumps. (Lucasta Miller)
Emotionally wrought and profoundly intelligent it will pull you into its troubled, wise world of jealousy, paranoia, grief, revenge and forgiveness in some of the most stunning prose you’ll read this year … Winterson masterfully interweaves layers of narrative and themes so that reading the novel is like listening to a Bach prelude and fugue … A supremely clever, compelling and emotionally affecting novel that deserves multiple readings to appreciate its many layers. (Hannah Beckerman)
Engrossing, almost soapily addictive
All stars
Most relevant

What made the experience of listening to The Gap of Time the most enjoyable?

A classic Shakespearean play was rewritten as a modern cautionary tale stuffed full of likeable and disreputable characters. Utterly believable and very compelling.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favourite?

Pauline.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I laughed , I cried, I worried for characters, I urged them on to do better, my heart ached for them, I cursed their folly. Overall I just became totally engrossed in this marvellous fictional world.

Any additional comments?

You don't have to be familiar with The Winter's Tale to enjoy this.

A Masterful Retelling of A Winter's Tale

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Loved it. Highly recommend. My first audio book and finished it so quickly it is that good.

fantastic version of winters tale.

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Where does The Gap of Time rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is certainly amongst the top 10 audiobooks I've listened to all the way through.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Perdita because she is both wise and innocent.

What three words best describe the narrators’s performance?

Flowing, challenging and unusual.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No this one needs time to reflect on between sittings.

Any additional comments?

Never seen a Winter's Tale performed, maybe now it's time to close that gap?

Playing with prose

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My favourite book for 2019.

The audio book performances were also superb. I will treasure my audio copy.

Wonderful.

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If you could sum up The Gap of Time in three words, what would they be?

What a rollercoaster!

What did you like best about this story?

I particularly enjoyed the links to Shakespeare's 'A Winter's Tale' and also the clever resettlement of the story into the modern day. The narrators did an excellent job of performing each character. You always knew who was speaking and there was a huge amount of emotion conveyed with the words.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I have not listened to any of these narrator's other performances yet.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness. What price would you pay?

Any additional comments?

I saw Jeannette Winterson speak at the Cheltenham Literary Festival about this book and I was fascinated. This is an excellent performance and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. I often found myself sat outside work for several extra minutes just to try and get a bit further in the story. I would definitely recommend this to any Shakespeare enthusiast and to anyone who wants to explore the theme of forgiveness.

What a rollercoaster!

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