Tamara Drewe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224078178 ISBN 13: 9780224078177

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2009

As with her brilliantly successful graphic novel Gemma Bovary, Tamara Drew is likewise inspired by a 19th century novel — in this case, Far From the Madding Crowd. Set in a writers’ retreat, it is a thrilling tale of jealousy and desire.
From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author:

Posy Simmonds is the author of several books for adults and children, including Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred. Her weekly cartoon strip ran in The Guardian from 1977 to 1987. She lives in England.
From the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. This irresistible graphic novel by longtime Guardian cartoonist Simmonds is roughly based on Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and uses it to depict the English upper-middle class having tawdry midlife crises. Beth, the wife of renowned author Nicholas Hardiman, runs an idyllic writer's retreat where she's parlayed her skill at caring for her husband into caring for other writers. She and her literary charges barely notice the locals who, jammed on council estates, look on with envy. Enter young Tamara Drewe, a newspaper columnist famed for her post–plastic surgery beauty. With Ben, her rock-star boyfriend, and her citified ways, she knocks Beth's little group on its head and gets stalked by two local girls. After Ben leaves Tamara, she decides the already adulterous Nicholas would be a nice lay on the rebound, only he falls in love with her. The art captures British frumpiness so well it's scary; middle-age spread hulks through this book like sad weight, but it's less skilled with beauty; Tamara's looks don't sway the reader the way they sway the characters in the book. But the view on how feminism has failed in moneyed Britain is priceless. A wonderful and slightly evil book. (Oct.)
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