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    Rose & Poe
    Rose & Poe
    Rose & Poe
    Audiobook6 hours

    Rose & Poe

    Written by Jack Todd

    Narrated by Nigel Patterson

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Set in mythical Belle Coeur County in a time not too far from our own, Rose Poe gloriously re-imagines Shakespeare's The Tempest from the point of view of Caliban and his mother.

    Rose and her giant, simple son, Poe, live quietly on the fringes of their town-tending their goats and working at odd jobs. Prosper Thorne, banished from his big-city law practice and worrying about his fading memory, obsessively watches over his beloved daughter Miranda.

    When Poe erupts from the forest one day carrying Miranda's bruised and bloody body, he is arrested, despite his protestations of get help-get help-get help. Overnight, Rose and Poe find themselves pariahs in the county where they have lived all their lives. In the face of bitter hatred and threats from her neighbors, the implacable Rose devotes all her strength to proving Poe's innocence and saving him from prison or worse.

    Rose Poe is a tale of a mother's boundless love for an apparently unlovable child, and a stunning fable for our own troubled times. It will stick in your memory like sweet wild honey.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 17, 2017
    ISBN9781541483163
    Author

    Jack Todd

    Jack Todd is the author of the novels Sun Going Down and Come Again No More and the memoir Desertion, which won the Quebec Writer’s Federation First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction. Visit his website at JackToddTheAuthor.com.

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    • 4/5
      Shakespearean plays focus exclusively on the nobility. Rustic, working class characters, if represented at all, were limited to the sidelines, basically acting as buffoons in the comedies. Author Jack Todd has opted to flip the script on “The Tempest” by moving Prospero (here known as Prosper Thorne) and the rest of the upper class characters to the margins, instead giving center stage to two possibly misunderstood characters - the sorceress Sycorax (aka Rose) and her monster son Caliban (Poe). In this day and age, where audiences more and more are demanding diversity and equal representation, Todd makes the case that the problems of the common man are arguably more interesting, and certainly more relatable, than those of the one-percenters. After all, Caliban was a slave, so it’s safe to assume he and his mother were defined by those who were in control the narrative. So it might be high time we re-considered this nasty woman and her half-caste offspring. This story centers on Rose, a dirt poor, sexually liberated, plus-sized single mother, and her gentle son Poe, a simple giant, who together eke out a living selling goat’s milk and doing odd jobs in a small town in upstate New York. Poe falls into unrequited love with Thorne’s beautiful daughter Miranda while building a stone wall around the retired lawyer’s property and is wrongfully accused of committing a violent crime against her. The townfolk automatically vilify him because of his mental disability and freakish appearance, but Rose fights to see him exonerated. While this is hardly a literal re-telling of “The Tempest,” anyone familiar with the original will recognize characters and plot points. Ariel has become Airmail, a courier and unofficial spy on a lightning fast Kawasaki Ninja. Stefano and Trinculo are Skeeter and Moe, two city boys attending a Fresh Air Fund type camp who spend their days following Poe’s enormous footprints, under the mistaken impression they’re on the trail of the mythical “Sasquank.” And of course, there’s a terrible storm that figures prominently in the dramatic action.This is a vastly entertaining book. The characters are believable and full of life. The story is engaging and, at times, suspenseful. Even if you aren’t familiar with the Shakespeare, Rose & Poe stands on its own as a captivating and uplifting story of dignity, loyalty and a mother’s love.