Juliet Stevenson to voice audiobook of Thorp’s debut

Olivier and Bafta-nominated actress Juliet Stevenson is to read the audiobook of J R Thorp's debut novel Learwife (Canongate). 

The book takes its inspiration from just two lines in Shakespeare’s play "King Lear", in which the queen is a character only mentioned twice. The publisher described it as "the story of one of the most famous women ever written out of literary history". The audiobook will be published on 4th November, alongside the hardback and e-book editions. 

Thorp said: "Learwife is written from the perspective of a single voice: the thwarted, brilliant, furious queen who has been absent from the play for hundreds of years. I heard her very clearly in my head while writing, in all her tender, awful glory, and to say I'm ecstatic that Juliet Stevenson is giving that voice life is an understatement."

Stevenson added: “I’m thrilled to be reading the audiobook of Learwife. 'King Lear' is my favourite Shakespeare play. I have always wanted to play him from the age of 15, when I saw a production that came to my school and it changed my life. Equally, I have long been preoccupied with the absence of wives and mothers in Shakespeare—it is a huge and potently painful hole in his writing, so this is a subject close to my heart. The ghost of yet another absent Shakespearean wife and mother has been given a body, a heart and a voice, and J R Thorp brilliantly reframes the whole narrative around her perspective.”