The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's "late plays." It tells the
story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby
daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and
brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of
extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too,
are reunited.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson's cover version of The
Winter's Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008
financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia.
Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and
the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a
story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption
and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.