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Ratings: ★★★★☆ (4.2 / 5)
Genre: Historical Fiction, Comic Novel, Literary Fiction, Satire

Book Review:
Lynne Truss is best known to the world as the witty and whip-wielding author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the surprise bestseller about punctuation. But with Tennyson's Gift, she proves that her talents extend far beyond grammar. This is a delightful, imaginative, and utterly charming comic novel that brings together some of the most eccentric figures of the Victorian age for a summer of unrequited love, artistic rivalry, and high-minded farce.

The year is 1864, and the place is Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight, a haven for the creative elite. At the center of the chaos is the Poet Laureate himself, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who recites his poetry to the furniture while his invalid wife, Emily, hides bad reviews in teapots and buries them in the garden. Also in residence is the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who is determined to capture the ''bard'' in a suitably heroic pose, with hilarious results. The cast expands to include the creepy but brilliant Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), the acclaimed painter G.F. Watts and his improbably young bride, the sixteen-year-old actress Ellen Terry, and a father-daughter team of American phrenologists who have come to measure the heads of genius.

Truss weaves these real-life characters into a story that is both wildly funny and surprisingly touching. She has a sharp eye for the absurdities of Victorian high culture—the obsession with ''Beauty,'' ''Art,'' and ''Serious Beards''—and she skewers the egotism and pretensions of her characters with a light, affectionate touch. But beneath the humor, there is genuine warmth and wisdom. The novel explores the nature of love, the cost of genius, and the strange, unpredictable ways in which people can touch each other's lives.

Tennyson's Gift is a perfect summer read, a book to be enjoyed in a deck-chair with a glass of lemonade. It is clever without being pretentious, funny without being cruel, and moving without being sentimental. As The Times said, it is ''a comic novel of subtle distinction… richly entertaining and at times very moving.'' For anyone who loves Victorian literature, or simply enjoys a well-crafted, witty, and original story, this book is a true gift.