TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR, THE(ISBN=) 英文原版

Starred Review. A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in
Phillips’s wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the
introduction to the play’s first printing—a Modern Library edition,
of course. Arthur Phillips and his twin sister, Dana, maintained an
uncommon relationship with their gregarious father, a forger whose
passion for the bard and for creating magic in the everyday (he
takes his kids to make crop circles one night) leave lasting
impressions on them both: Dana becomes a stage actress and amateur
Shakespeare expert; Arthur a writer who “never much liked
Shakespeare.” Their father spends most of their lives in prison,
but when he’s about to be released as a frail old man, he enlists
Arthur in securing the publication of The Tragedy of Arthur from an
original quarto he claims to have purloined from a British estate
decades earlier, though, as the authentication process wears
on—successfully—Arthur becomes convinced the play is his father’s
greatest scam. Along the way, Arthur riffs on his career and ex-pat
past, and, most excruciatingly, unpacks his relationship with Dana
and his own romantic flailings. Then there’s the play itself, which
reads not unlike something written by the man from
Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart
and playful. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights
reserved.