The Tutor
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A bold and captivating novel about love, passion, and ambition that imagines the muse of William Shakespeare and the tumultuous year they spend together.
The year is 1590, and Queen Elizabeth’s Spanish Armada victory has done nothing to quell her brutal persecution of the English Catholics. Katharine de L’Isle is living at Lufanwal Hall, the manor of her uncle, Sir Edward. Taught by her cherished uncle to read when a child, Katharine is now a thirty-one-year-old widow. She has resigned herself to a life of reading and keeping company with her cousins and their children. But all that changes when the family’s priest, who had been performing Catholic services in secret, is found murdered. Faced with threats of imprisonment and death, Sir Edward is forced to flee the country, leaving Katharine adrift in a household rife with turmoil.
At this time of unrest, a new schoolmaster arrives from Stratford, a man named William Shakespeare. Coarse, quick-witted, and brazenly flirtatious, Shakespeare swiftly disrupts what fragile peace there is left at Lufanwal. Katharine is at first appalled by the boldness of this new tutor, but when she learns he is a poet, and one of talent, things between them begin to shift, and soon Katharine finds herself drawn into Shakespeare’s verse, and his life, in ways that will change her forever.
Inventive and absorbing, The Tutor is a masterful work of historical fiction, casting Shakespeare in a light we’ve never seen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chapin's debut novel imagines the shaky romance between a widow and her nephews' tutor, a budding actor and poet named William Shakespeare, against the background of family strife and religious persecution in 16th-century England. After losing her husband and babies, Katharine de L'Isle throws herself into reading and devotes herself to her kindly uncle Sir Edward, who wishes her to be happy and to marry again. When their priest is killed, Sir Edward decides to make his way to France (having already once been imprisoned by the Protestant queen); Katharine, who is feeling vulnerable among her other nutty relatives, initially finds Will irritating, but quickly succumbs to his charms. The sexual tension between them increases when he asks for her help in creating a long poem about Venus and Adonis. Meanwhile, there are signs that Will might be a heartless social climber and not the loving, trustworthy sort that Katharine imagines him to be. Though the beginning is rife with obvious meet-cute and will-they-or-won't-they tropes, Chapin manages to construct a moving account of Katharine's plight. The backdrop of family in-fighting and petty power-seizing also underscores how Sir Edward's departure put Katharine, a single woman of modest means, in a true predicament among her unbalanced relatives. Unfortunately, the heroine makes some head-scratching choices as her family plummets into further mayhem and melodrama moves that pull the story into territory that's more silly than tragic. Despite this, Chapin's inaugural work offers a fun portrait of Shakespeare as a cad.
Customer Reviews
I loved this story and Chapin’s ability to mix imagined and historic events and moments to enrich th
Expanding on the turbulence of late 1500’s England, where Catholic persecution started in Henry VIII’s reign would soon give rise to the Gunpowder Plot, now most celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day with bonfires. In this novel, Andrea Chapin has captured the secretive and persecuted nature of the secret Catholics in this story, as she introduces us to Katharine de L’Isle, a widow living with her uncle. Resigned to a life of reading, spending time with cousins but without love. When her Uncle’s priest is discovered and murdered leaving blatant ties to the household, Katherine’s uncle flees prosecution and England leaving the household in turmoil.
The integration of the family and other secondary characters helps to add a sense of the era, the struggles and even the tiny dramas within every family. Cleverly woven in as direct to loosely contrived connections to characters from several of Shakespeare’s works: a device that adds a richness to the secondary characters, giving them a prominence that would otherwise leave them as filler.
With Uncle Edward on the run, the house in turmoil and a general dissolve of the Hall’s orderly functions a new tutor arrives. Bold, plain spoken, flirtatious and quick witted, William Shakespeare sets Katherine back a few steps: never expecting half of what comes from his behavior. But, as she hears more, she notices his facility with language, the poetic musings and his cleverness and is intrigued. Soon their attraction morphs into something more: sharing ideas and conversations, and Katherine begins to fall in love.
For me this story’s true joys were in the interactions and interpretations of characters, the conversations and the facility with languages: Chapin has a deft hand for mixing conversation, word use and presentation of both story and character that captivates imagination and feels very solidly Shakespearean. Nuanced, often layered with entendre and a sly wit, the carryover works to keep readers thinking and processing. Adding in flavors of the political and social climate of the time grounds the story as solidly Elizabethan, while never overtly condemning or accusing any of the players in the very tumultuous game.
I loved this story and Chapin’s ability to mix imagined and historic events and moments to enrich the reader’s understanding and infatuation with the time. A fun piece of historic fiction that hit on my Shakespeare obsession, but wove a story that intrigued and engaged throughout.
I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.