Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love-Life by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0-393-31507-X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: December, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Nothing Like The Sun
Comment: Anthony Burgess's "Nothing Like The Sun" is a linguistic marvel. It is a philosophically oppressive look at William Shakespeare's foray into literature and the world. Starting in the small 'borough' of Stratford, WS (as he is called) is an apprentice leather craftsman. He spends his days and nights dreaming of plays, gentility, and idealistic love.
Most of the novel shows WS trying to figure out what kind of love he is after. His notions of love come from Plato's "Symposium" - will it be common, physical lust, or contemplation of absolute beauty leading to his best poetic and dramatic works? The relationships that the novel explores these questions with are with the youthful noble Henry Wriothesly and the exotic, colonial Fatima.
Burgess delights in wordplay throughout the novel, using for the most part, the language of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets in the narration and dialogue. Unlike "Shakespeare in Love" Burgess's novel does not build around any specific text, instead making his works almost marginal to the drama of Shakespeare's fictional biography. Burgess presents Shakespeare's works as the results and expressions of a desperate life.
Burgess augments Shakespeare's story with an almost post-colonial historical setting. With Fatima allegedly from the Indies, and a backdrop of English oppression of the Irish, "Nothing Like The Sun" complicates Shakespeare's historical moment. Class struggles, plagues, and political sterility also mark the temporal setting as the novel moves from the country (Stratford) to the coast (Bristol) to the capital (London).
Reading "Nothing Like The Sun" was a welcome experience for me, having only ever read Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" before. The writing style takes a little getting used to, but that is the price you pay for art. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 4
Summary: A dark alternative to "Shakespeare in Love"
Comment: Lacks the tragic inevitability of "Dead Man in Deptford", but still a good read. Brilliant language, Elizabethan England nicely evoked, well-drawn characters, clever speculation to fill in the gaps in what we know of Shakespeare's life. A bit crazy, especially at first, but that's what you pay for with Burgess, right?
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating fictional story of Shakespeare's life and times
Comment: This fictional account strings together those facts we know about Shakespeare and uses complete and admitted fancy to flesh out the rest of his life. In this way, Burgess creates a fascinating and engaging lifestory of the young provincial man who became the greatest playwright of our language. While clearly a novel, it manages to make real, palpable people from those faceless names of the Elizabethean time, and helps makes sense (or nonsense) of so many of the theories surrounding Shakespeare's genius. It's vividness shows Burgess as a master of both academia and imagination. A thoroughly good read, and a must for anyone remotely interested in Shakespeare.
 |
Title: Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0786709723 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0786711523 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Re Joyce by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0393004457 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0393316025 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0393315088 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: December, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
