The Queen of the Tambourine [Paperback]

Jane Gardam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1996

With prose that is vibrant witty and off-the-wall, The Queen of the Tambourine traces the emotional breakdown--and eventual restoration--of Eliza Peabody, a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her prosperous home in present-day South London. The letters Eliza writes to her neighbor, a woman whom she hardly knows, reveal the story of her self-propelled descent into madness. Eliza must reach the very bottom of her inner downward spiral before she can once again find health and serenity. The story of a woman's confrontation with the ideas and realities of sanity, The Queen of Tambourine will delight readers who enjoy the works of Anita Brookner, Sybille Bedford, Muriel Spark, and Sylvia Plath.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winner of Britain's Whitbread Award, Gardam's darkly comic novel is in the form of a series of letters written by a mentally disintegrating woman.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Eliza Peabody, a slender woman of 50 with dark, flashing eyes, is married to a terribly aloof dignitary and lives in a very posh section of London where everyone knows everyone else and their dogs, or at least pretends to. Eliza, a bit outre because of her lack of children and abundance of imagination, becomes obsessed with Joan, her enigmatic neighbor. We know this because we're privy to some very patronizing letters Eliza writes to Joan just before Joan ditches husband, children, and, yes, dog, and sets out on an arduous journey to such unvacationy places as Bangladesh. Joan's abrupt departure coincides with the disintegration of Eliza's marriage. Eliza slips into a rather mad frame of mind, which we learn about solely through the hilarious and poignant letters she continues to write and not necessarily send to the ever-elusive Joan. Gardam, recipient of two Whitbread Awards, strikes an unusual balance between wit and sweetness, creating a smart but gentle novel that seems to be from a far less explicit era than our own. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 226 pages
• Publisher: Picador (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312143982
• ISBN-13: 978-0312143985
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,232,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was awarded an OBE in January 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I never knew my tribe. I've always been on the edge, just hanging about.", September 6, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Queen of the Tambourine (Paperback)

(4.5 stars) Eliza Peabody begins writing to her neighbor Joan, not a close friend, almost immediately after Joan leaves her husband Charles and disappears, leaving behind only a series of addresses around the world where she may be contacted. Eliza takes it upon herself to write to Joan repeatedly, offering unsolicited advice, observations (unintentionally insulting) about Joan's husband and children, and comments about her role as a woman, which she knows that Joan does not share. Joan never answers.

Over the course of more than a year, the letters become longer and more revealing, ultimately showing Eliza to be a frustrated and mentally disturbed woman who may need hospitalization. As she spirals downward and begins to hallucinate, most readers will empathize with her (as much as one can empathize with a meddlesome and impossibly tactless woman) while questioning if anything she says is the truth.

Jane Gardam, with her supremely subtle humor, creates in Eliza a character few readers will be able to resist. Thinking herself a realist who calls a spade a spade, Eliza has no clue that others regard her as rude, unthinking, and self-centered--someone whose lack of awareness leaves her open to accusations of malice. Her messages to Joan, filled with dramatic irony, show her to be far from the "helpful friend" she thinks herself. When Joan sends her a pair of elaborate earrings, resembling tambourines, she is called the "The Queen of the Tambourine" by Barry, a young man dying in the hospice she sometimes visits.

As Eliza goes about her daily life, including her hilarious attendance at a local literary group meeting, the author's ability to create clever satire and wonderful observations about love, marriage, and friendship shine with the candor of one who has little patience with pretension and a person's lack of self-awareness. Few writers can match Gardam's sense of irony, and she is subtle and clever in creating Eliza's letters.

Illustrating the absurdities inherent in a suburban lifestyle that Joan has escaped and which Eliza wants to preserve, Gardam creates a leisurely and assured novel about self-awareness, the opportunities and limitations of marriage, and the constraints of society. The liberating role of sex in a healthy relationship, and the role of fantasy, especially as it relates to sex, infuses the novel. Wry, clever, and thoughtful, this Whitbread Award-winning novel from 1991, newly republished by Europa Editions following the success of Gardam's Old Filth, should expand her literary reputation on this "side of the pond" and gain Gardam many new fans. n Mary Whipple

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gently Going "Dotty" in South London, August 5, 2000

By 

Joseph Furshong - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Queen of the Tambourine (Paperback)

Slowly working my way through the Whitbread winners, it was a treat to come across Jane Gardam's tale of Eliza Peabody's sadly entertaining descent into madness. Lonely Eliza, abandoned by her husband during a mid-life crisis, tells her story through letters to Joan, a departed neighbor she barely knows. Gardam weaves a compelling and utterly convincing tapestry that illustrates the delicate balance between madness and sanity, and how the balance tips day to day, minute to minute. The language is beautiful, the ending surprising, the memory haunting. Certainly deserving of it's Whitbread accolade, "The Queen of the Tambourines" is oddly foretelling of Michael Cunningham's recent Pulitzer winner, "The Hours."

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just read it as soon as you can, December 2, 2005

By 

KatPanama "katpanama" (Readerville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Queen of the Tambourine (Paperback)

Gardam is amazing and this novel is one of a kind, superbly so. Just read it. If I tried to talk about it at all I'd make a mess of it.