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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
ÃIt is a tribute to NyeÃs achievement that we shall not be able to meet the great original again without thinking of this other Fallestelf or Farstalff.ÃÃAnthony Burgess Winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize The most beloved comic figure in English literature decides that history hasnÃt done him justiceÃitÃs time for him to tell the whole unbuttoned story, his way. Irascible and still lecherous at eighty-one, Falstaff spins out these outrageously bawdy memoirs as an antidote to legend, and in the process manages to recreate his own. This splendidly written novel is a feast, opening wide the look and feel of another age and bringing ShakespeareÃs Falstaff to life in a totally new way. Like Jack Falstaff himself, itÃs sprawling, vivid, oversizedÃbig as life. We return in an instant to an England that was ribald, violent, superstitious, coursing with high spirits and a fresh sense of national purpose. We see what history and the Bard of Avon overlooked or avoided: what really happened that celebrated night at the windmill when Falstaff and Justice Shallow heard the chimes at midnight; who really killed Hotspur; how many men fell at the Battle of Agincourt; what actually transpired at the coronation of Henry V ("Harry the Prig"); and just what it was that made the wives of Windsor so very merry. Falstaff "tells all" about Prince Hal, John of Gaunt ("that maniac"), Pistol, Bardolph, Doll Tearsheet, and Jane Nightwork. At the same time, his racy narrative offers us a tapestry of the Middle Ages: the Black Death and May Day; an expedition to Ireland and a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; nights at the BoarÃs Head; the splendor of London Bridge; and hundreds of other sights and sounds and people zestfully recalled between scabrous opinions and irreverent meditationsÃin sum, the very flavor of a great age. The voice is unmistakably FalstaffÃs and his great drama swaggers, laughs, and shouts across every page.
