- Paperback: 198 pages
- Publisher: Pewter Rose Press (30 Nov 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1908136014
- ISBN-13: 978-1908136015
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,015,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Onion Stone
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
I'm left with a kaleidoscopic impression of a dreamlike dual-time story, with parallels and motifs that reflect back and forth in a gradual revelation of one cleverly-imagined solution to an age-old mystery. --Rebecca Tope
In The Onion Stone Mandy Pannett has written an extraordinary story. The plot gathers pace with an interweaving of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries as intricate as the knotwork that she creates in the lives of the protagonists, and with great scholarly knowledge she draws us into a tale of intrigue, counter-intrigue, treachery, love, rivalry, loss and questions about the identity of the greatest playwright England has known (but possible answers do not alight on the usual suspects). The author's ear for language is perfectly attuned to the Elizabethan era. When I came to the end I wasn't sure what was fact and what was fiction; but I knew that all of it was intelligent and gripping. This is a rich and wide-ranging read, much bigger than its length in terms of pages. --Roselle Angwin
Who was the real Shakespeare? This intriguing story is full of surprises and is beautifully written in modern and Elizabethan English. The author brings together a few eccentric old academics and weaves her tale round their past love affairs, their ambitions, rivalries, secrets and failures. I strongly recommend this book. --Susan Skinner
In The Onion Stone Mandy Pannett has written an extraordinary story. The plot gathers pace with an interweaving of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries as intricate as the knotwork that she creates in the lives of the protagonists, and with great scholarly knowledge she draws us into a tale of intrigue, counter-intrigue, treachery, love, rivalry, loss and questions about the identity of the greatest playwright England has known (but possible answers do not alight on the usual suspects). The author's ear for language is perfectly attuned to the Elizabethan era. When I came to the end I wasn't sure what was fact and what was fiction; but I knew that all of it was intelligent and gripping. This is a rich and wide-ranging read, much bigger than its length in terms of pages. --Roselle Angwin
Who was the real Shakespeare? This intriguing story is full of surprises and is beautifully written in modern and Elizabethan English. The author brings together a few eccentric old academics and weaves her tale round their past love affairs, their ambitions, rivalries, secrets and failures. I strongly recommend this book. --Susan Skinner
Product Description
Ardie Davendish advertises for an assistant to help with his research on Shakespeare. When Henry Shakspeare arrives with some new and startling ideas about the authorship no one forsees the consequences that will follow. Ardie and T.Townsend Ellis, friends and rivals from schooldays, have spent a lifetime striving to outdo each other with a literary scoop about Shakespeare. And Henry begins to play them against each other. Interwoven with the modern rivalry is an Elizabethan love story showing the mystery and scandal surrounding Gilbert Shakespeare and Anne Cecil, the unhappy wife of the Earl of Oxford. Secrets about the identity of Shakespeare are gradually revealed, leading to the final revelation.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Onion Stone,
By
This review is from: The Onion Stone (Paperback)
`People love their mysteries' thinks one of Mandy Pannett's characters in The Onion Stone, and her novel holds several of them. What was the nature of the relationship, dating back to their university years in the 1930s, of Ardie, Frances and the third member of their triangle, their friend Ellis? How are the consequences of that relationship playing out in the present? Who will win the ultimate prize and write the book revealing the real Shakespeare? Can Ardie's new assistant, Henry Shakspeare, be the great playwright's true descendant? And, in a second narrative made up of extracts from letters and journals, snaking through the first, we have the Tudor mystery itself: who was the real Shakespeare? Working through multiple voices, internal and external, past and present, the author leads us through the puzzle.Mandy Pannett is a published poet and she clearly revels in sixteenth century prose, which glitters with the rich imagery reminiscent of literature of that period. Her writing fully inhabits the world of Tudor England without falling into the trap of heavy pastiche. She has a light touch and her use of short chapters and good pacing pulls the reader effortlessly towards the final revelations. Themes are reflected back and forth between the time spans. We think of the Tudor era as a time of intrigue yet a leading university college may hold ambitions equally intense within its walls today. A noble lady in an arranged marriage in the sixteenth century may have had less freedom than a highly educated twentieth century woman, yet both have to manoeuvre within their social confines. Themes of envy, rivalry, love and disillusion are reflected in both eras and the passions of the past still have an impact down the centuries. This novel of just under 200 pages encompasses a greater expanse of time and ideas than many much heavier tomes, while remaining a highly enjoyable novel.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Onion Stone,
By
This review is from: The Onion Stone (Paperback)
I've known Mandy for a long while now online as a superlative poet; well known for both her intensely erudite yet accessible poetry that draws its inspiration from the earliest poets to the modern day, and also as a respected and sought after judge for poetry competitions. I had no idea she wrote prose as well. If I'd thought about it, I'd have assumed she would write absorbing text books on Anglo Saxon poetic forms, or maybe intriguing new insights into Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd have been part right, as `The Onion Stone' has the age old question of who really wrote William Shakespeare's works as one of its themes, but it is so much more than merely a re-hash of the latest theories woven into some sort of a detective story. Goodness knows enough authors have been down that road. No, what Mandy Pannett does here is something quite different. She has created an utterly absorbing tale of two women; Anne Cecil and Frances Goodbody; one young but centuries old, the other elderly but living today. Both have to deal with monsters - Anne with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and Frances with her appalling husband Ardie, along with an old lover who has his own streak of destructiveness - Ellis. Ardie and Ellis were friends (or thought they were) in their youth, but a combination of professional and personal jealousy has soured them and turned the once brilliant young men into vicious old ones. And then there's Gilbert, but you'll find no spoilers here, so I won't say any more about him. Amongst the intriguing dramatis personae there is also the somewhat creepy Henry Shakspeare in the present day, and the long suffering William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in the past, who for me is one of the more sympathetic characters.So what happens when a poet writes a novel? Does she slip into rhyming couplets? Become wholly obscure? No, not even slightly. The poet creeps into the writing through the sense of place, the wonderful though brief descriptions of Sussex, Warwickshire, London etc. This feel for the countryside along with the pace of the story-telling put me in mind, quite randomly, of Margery Allingham. On the other hand, the depth of characterisation is much more Iris Murdoch. And running through it all, there's more than a hint of Virginia Woolf. Three very different writers. Put them together, stir well, and out comes Mandy Pannett wearing her novelist's hat. The only problem I have with this book is the length. It is far too short. I wanted it to be four times as long so that all the themes could be developed further. I wanted more scenes in both the present and the past; I particularly wanted to witness conversations between Anne and Gilbert, and between Anne and Edward, but in a little under 200 pages, there just isn't room. I wanted to read Frances' book. Maybe Mandy will write that next. And I definitely wanted to give Ardie and Ellis a good slap.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A mystery solved?,
This review is from: The Onion Stone (Paperback)
Mandy Pannett's fluid prose takes the reader effortlessly between the C16th and C20th in this tale of love, scholarship, jealousy and rivalry. Managing to maintain a credible balance between the parallel stories, in the end she gives us an original and unexpected solution to the perennial mystery concerning the true authorship of Shakespeare's work.Both for readers who have a particular interest in this much debated question and for those who just enjoy a good read, The Onion Stone is a must.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
