Play: Coast of Utopia Play 2

by Tom Stoppard

Book Overview

Shipwreck is the second part of The Coast of Utopia , Tom Stoppard's long-awaited and monumental trilogy that explores a group of friends who came of age under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas I, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571216633
• ISBN13: 9780571216635
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 96 Pages

Customer Reviews

Lives cut tragically short, and painful losses all around

Tom Stoppard is arguably the single finest playwright of his generation, and the Coast of Utopia trilogy is a massive undertaking that in the hands of a less skilled author could have gone awry and badly. Stoppard though manages to make what could be a painfully pedantic history lesson into a moving portrayal of love, ideology, loss, and change.Shipwreck is decidedly the most tragic of the three, the loss of innocence and the tragically young deaths of several characters are heart breaking, as is the way Stoppard deals the blow to the reader or audience. Vissarion Belinsky in particular lends a spark to the entire piece, and his desperation at finding the answer he has spent his life searching for is one of the most heart wrenching things I have ever read.The history is neither dominate or secondary to the characterization here, rather Stoppard manages to make the historical events we know (or may not know) part and parcel of the volatile and fascinating lives of some of Russias greatest citizens.