The Winter's Tale - an introduction

Mr Anthony

NB: The following essay contains plot spoilers regarding the play’s ending. 
 
The Winter’s Tale is a play about a man who believes a lie of his own making and is outraged when others won’t believe it too. Leontes’s confidence in his wife’s infidelity is, unlike Othello’s, entirely self-generated; indeed, Emilia’s famed description of jealousy as 'a monster begot upon itself, born on itself' is more fitting of Leontes’s condition than that of Othello, who requires three acts of careful priming by Iago before exploding with the ferocity Leontes achieves in his first scene. The refusal of Leontes’s court to support the false narrative of Hermione’s adultery reveals a political microclimate (unusual in Jacobean theatre) devoid of sycophants and schemers, devoted instead to truth and plain speaking.

Predict the Booker 2023

Predict the Booker 2023

On Wednesday evening, six Paulines boldly took on the annual challenge of pitting their wits against the Booker Prize panel, hoping to persuade our live and online audience that their selection from the 2023 shortlist would be this year's winner.  

The Booker prize is, as our erudite host Mr Mahmoud observed, the leading literary award in the English speaking world. It's also the literary award that the Pauline community is apparently incapable of predicting with any accuracy: we now have a five year record of absolute, total, 100% failure. Will this year be any different?* We're eternal optimists here at the book blog, so here's hoping that it will be (tho we'll have to wait until Sunday evening to find out).  In the meantime, here's what our volunteer readers thought of the novels they selected.  

Book of the Week

A reminder that tomorrow evening, it's our annual Predict the Booker event: six books, and six Pauline readers, each with five minutes to talk about one of the shortlisted books, and take questions from the audience, before we vote for the novel that the SPS community thinks should win the prestigious Booker Prize of 2023. The actual winner will be announced on Sunday 26 November, and we'll then discover whether the judges agree with our choice!

This year, our readers are as follows:

• Xavi is reading Study for Obedience, Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling book about prejudice in a remote northern community. 
• Max is reading The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a tragicomic story of a family trying not to fall apart in rural Ireland. 
• Aditya is reading Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Also set in Ireland, this imagines a totalitarian future where a mother has to make a terrible choice. 
• Archie returns to read for the second time. This time he is reading This Other Eden by Paul Harding, the story of an island of rejects from the American mainstream whose community comes under threat from civilisation. 
• Sai is reading Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane - a story of family, grief, and squash. 
• And finally, Enyu, makes a very welcome return for the third time to read If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. This book follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew.

The event, hosted by Mr Mahmoud, takes place in the Kayton Library at 18.30 tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd), but it's also available on our live stream - click here if you'd like to register to attend.  You can find out more about the books, and the Booker, here.

Meanwhile, here's today's book of the week:  

Flatland by Edwin A Abbot

Recommended by Ishaan Nigam

Flatland is a book about the way creatures perceive their world, and how they believe that there could be no more to reality than what they experience, even though the universe may be infinitely more complex. This concept is concisely brought to life through the eyes of a 2d square in a dimension known as Flatland. 

The first part of the book is a description of the narrator and the nature of his society. The second part of the book is about the narrator’s visit by a Sphere and his subsequent journeys into other dimensions (both above and below) and how this changes his perception of his own dimension.  Although Flatland is a fictional book, it challenges the reader to think about very real mathematical and philosophical concepts, and to adjust their own perception using the insights from the narrator. I would recommend this book to people from around age eleven and above who are more mathematically inclined, or to slightly older readers of fourteen and above.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Recommended by Luke Williams 

Brighton Rock explores themes of manipulation, religion, love, suicide, violence and hatred. Its central character, Pinkie, a small-time gangster, is a bad person. Despite this, Graham Greene presents his tale in such a way that it can be easy for the reader to forget it. 

Book of the Week

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Recommended by Giovanni Bertolli
 
Dracula is a Gothic fiction, hailed as a classic of literature. Moreover, it is an action-packed horror story. 

The novel begins with Jonathan Harker, who has been sent to Transylvania, to the castle of Count Dracula. On the way, local peasants warn him about his destination, giving him crucifixes and other strange charms against evil and uttering unfamiliar words which Harker is able to translate as ‘vampire’. Nonetheless, he continues on his journey to meet with Count Dracula, a client of his legal firm, in order to finalise a property transaction. However, after a few days at the castle, he realises that he is effectively a prisoner!