Book Of The Month October, 2007
The Darkness Of Wallis SimpsonRose Tremain
Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American woman for whom Edward Vlll abdicated in 1936, ended her life (as the Duchess of Windsor) as the prisoner of her lawyer who would not allow anyone – friend, foe or journalist – to visit her in her Paris flat. Rose Tremain takes this true story and transforms it into an imaginative and ironic fiction.Her thesis is that Wallis, gaga and bed-ridden, has forgotten the king who gave up an empire for love of her. This superb story plays with the selectiveness of memory: why does Wallis recall the seemingly unimportant, while forgetting the glory days of her notoriety? She can remember her first two husbands – one a bit of a brute, the other very boring – but not the world-famous third one. The other stories in thismagnificent collection range over a variety of themes, equally original and unexpected. An East German border guard, redundant after the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, imagines that he might still have a purpose in life: he tries to reach Russia by bicycling across the hostile wastes of Poland. A jilted man gets his revenge. A baby grows wings. A character in an Impressionist painting escapes from his ‘frame’ – or does he? And there’s a Christmas story set in a seedy hotel…
What We Think
The Random House Group Marketing on The Darkness of Wallis Simpson:
With her short story The Colonel’s Daughter winning the Dylan Thomas, it’s fair to say that Rose Tremain is a master of the tall tale. This latest anthology doesn’t disappoint. The title story focuses around Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American woman for whom Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, who died imprisoned by her lawyer in her Paris flat. Written in the first person, the story gives the reader a real sense of Simpson’s increasing senility and selective memory.
There are 11 other stories in this distinguished collection, focusing around a variety of themes – a jilted man gets his revenge, a baby grows wings, and a character in an impressionist painting escapes from his frame.
‘Written with the deft imagination we’ve come to know and love from Rose Tremain’ Good Housekeeping
‘Moving and tragic…the darkness of Rose Tremain is never far from the surface in this brilliantly written short story collection’ Lianne Kolirin, Express
If you liked She May not Leave by Fay Weldon, you’ll love this!