![]() ![]() The plot fictionalises the final chapters of Christopher Marlowe’s life, broadly from his induction into the seedy underworld of Sir Francis Walsingham’s spy network until his tragic – in the true sense of the word – death at just 29. But the cognitive dissonance provoked by all the strangeness adds to the immersive qualities of the book, and I demolished the final third in a sitting. ![]() You need to concentrate, and I needed to read it in chunks as one of several books I had on the go. The themes of the novel are too, so readers who seek something less demanding are going to be left puzzled and frustrated. It’s rich, meaty, and requires some perseverance to unlock. So I approached A Dead Man in Deptfordwith some excitement and expectation, stoked by one of the most visually arresting book covers I’ve seen in years.īurgess’ prose won’t be to everyone’s taste. I’ve been known to use A Clockwork Orange as a way of accessing Shakespeare: if you can decipher Burgess’s prose in that, my reasoning goes, Shakespeare should hold few terrors for you – simply apply the same skills. ![]()
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