"Funny and moving."-The New York Times
In prose vibrant and witty, 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 London neighborhood. Eliza must reach the depths of her downward spiral before she can once again find health and serenity. This story of a woman's confrontation with the realities of sanity will delight readers who enjoy the works of Anita Brookner, Sybille Bedford, Muriel Spark, and Sylvia Plath. Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year.
The narrative takes the form of letters from Eliza Peabody, affluent 50ish wife of a senior civil servant, to her equally middle-aged but less dutiful neighbor, Joan. The first letters begin as brief notes, reproaches from a stiff-necked busybody to her hypochondriac neighbor.
But then Joan absconds to wander the Middle East, leaving husband and children behind, and Eliza wonders if she is to blame. She takes in Joan's husband and encourages his attentions. The letters lengthen and become more erratic as Eliza's personality spills out on paper. Her own marriage dissolves when her husband goes off with Joan's husband, and Eliza traces the years of its unraveling between visits to a young man dying of AIDS in a hospice, long walks with the two dogs (hers and Joan's), and musings about the other neighbors.
As it becomes apparent how isolated Eliza is in her South London home, her narrative becomes increasingly suspect. It seems less certain that her husband and Joan's have any relationship other than a desire to escape Eliza. Far from being a most important personage at the hospice, Eliza is shunted off to do the dishes, possibly because she talks too much and inappropriately too.
Yet her self-revelations to Joan are plaintive, appealing and sometimes hilarious. As Eliza reveals herself less of a figure in the world, she becomes more of an individual - a wildly imaginative individual with a flair for anecdotes.
But it seems that not all of Eliza's anecdotes are real. But what is real and what is not becomes increasingly difficult for Eliza herself to determine. Meanwhile she continues to explore her deepest feelings on motherhood (Eliza is childless), marriage and social expectations.
She develops new relationships in the community, particularly with the precocious children of the overbusy curate and his wife. Or does she only wish that she has?
Midway through the novel, everything is suspect, except for Eliza's voice which grows stronger and truer as she sheds expectations- both of and for herself. Gardam brings her protagonist back from the abyss of madness at the end. She also lets the reader know where Eliza has crossed the line between imagination and reality and why.
Unfortunately, to do this, she uses a device which is too simple and detracts from the integrity of its protagonist and the complexity of a marvelous narrative. This ending mars a novel which is otherwise sharply, incisively written with an intriguing heroine balanced on her private desert of shifting sands.
