SOURCE: Gordon, Jane E. Review of The Short History of a Prince, by Jane Hamilton. Antioch Review 57, no. 1 (winter 1999): 115.

In the following review, Gordon examines the disparity between the protagonist's extraordinary dreams and his ordinary life in The Short History of a Prince.

This story [The Short History of a Prince] is about the transformative power of ordinariness, coming to terms with death, and acceptance of real life. One might say it is about the death of fantasy, and the acceptance of ordinary reality. Told in a style that juxtaposes the present and past of Walter McCloud, a Midwestern English teacher in the present, gay adolescent in the past, it is a story of a person eventually coming to terms with the loss of his brother to cancer, the loss of his own dreams of being a ballet star, the acceptance of his homosexuality (not very well worked...