Product Details

• Published on: 2004-08
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 10
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Customer Reviews

Intriguing and exciting
This is definitely my favourite Ackroyd book, with twists and turns of the mysterious plot catching your attention, and the carefully crafted characters making your imagination work. Beautiful imagery, deft characterisations and all loose ends intricately knotted yet tied up at the end, this is definitely a good start to Ackroyd.

intelligent and imaginative
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. He died (according to some committed suicide) aged only 17. Using this as a starting point Ackroyd has given us a stunning historical detective novel, rich in language, and filled with unforgettable characters (Dickens comes to mind).

A great book, I hope you'll love it as much as I did.

Dead poet mystery
This story takes place at several points in time simultaneously. It is based on a famous portrait of the 18th century poet Chatterton, supposedly painted just after he'd committed suicide, aged 17, because of lack of recognition and poverty in London. He'd been successful (though unrecognised) in Bristol by writing in the guise of a 14th century monk.

We are with Chatterton in his boyhood in Bristol and later when he dies in London, though it transpires that he died after all by giving himself, when drunk, the wrong dose of arsenic to cure his VD.

Interfolded with all this is the story of the painter of the famous picture, who had an affair with the wife of the model he used (a bit closer to the present); and, in the present day, the story of another dying poet who finds some old papers that seem to be by Chatterton, and a mysterious portrait which seems to be of a MIDDLE-AGED Chatterton.

The book is exploring the nature of forgery and the nature of history and time. Does it matter that the picture of the dead Chatterton is not really of him, but of a model, and that for all posterity the model will be seen as the real Chatterton? And if Chatterton's writings were so like those of a 14th century monk as to be indistinguishable, are they any less valuable than the real thing? And why should the dead poet not visit the live one on his deathbed - are these things really all happening at once, though we only see bits of them?