AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2021
'I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here.'
Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story.
Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests.
Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalising mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present.
Goldsboro Books November 2021 PREM1ER pick. Features an exclusive dust jacket with sprayed edges, signed, and numbered. Limited to 1500 copies.
- ISBN13 9781838857721
- Publish Date 4 November 2021
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Canongate Books Ltd
- Edition Goldsboro Exclusive
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 336
- Language English
- Special Exclusive Design Numbered Signed Sprayed Edges