Learwife

Paperback | 5 January 2022

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Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, this breathtaking debut novel tells the story of the most famous woman ever written out of literary history.

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.

About the Author

J.R. Thorp is a writer, lyricist and librettist. She won the London Short Story Award in 2011 and was shortlisted for the BBC Opening Lines Prize, and has had work published in the Cambridge Literary Review, Manchester Review, Antithesis, Wave Composition and elsewhere. She wrote the libretto for the highly acclaimed modern opera Dear Marie Stopes and has had works commissioned by the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and St Paul's Cathedral. Born in Australia, she now lives in Cork, Ireland.

Learwife is her first novel.

Industry Reviews

'With Learwife, J.R. Thorp has created an entire world out of a void. A stunning voice, hers is one you will remember, and look out for, in the years to come' - JING-JING LEE, author of the Women's Prize-longlisted HOW WE DISAPPEARED

'Thorp has given voices to so many women who have been written out of history, whose names have been forgotten or were never uttered in the first place . . . Learwife is a story about female power; both how vast it can be, and how fragile' - CATHERINE PRASIFKA

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