Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen

Spicier and more engaging retelling of one of the greatest love stories

Synopsis of Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen: An enthralling new telling of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"--told from the perspective of Juliet's nurse.

In Verona, a city ravaged by plague and political rivalries, a mother mourning the death of her day-old infant enters the household of the powerful Cappelletti family to become the wet-nurse to their newborn baby. As she serves her beloved Juliet over the next fourteen years, the nurse learns the Cappellettis' darkest secrets. Those secrets--and the nurse's deep personal grief--erupt across five momentous days of love and loss that destroy a daughter, and a family.

By turns sensual, tragic, and comic, "Juliet's Nurse" gives voice to one of literature's most memorable and distinctive characters, a woman who was both insider and outsider among Verona's wealthy ruling class. Exploring the romance and intrigue of interwoven loyalties, rivalries, jealousies, and losses only hinted at in Shakespeare's play, this is a never-before-heard tale of the deepest love in Verona--the love between a grieving woman and the precious child of her heart.

In the tradition of Sarah Dunant, Philippa Gregory, and Geraldine Brooks, "Juliet's Nurse "is a rich prequel that reimagines the world's most cherished tale of love and loss, suffering and survival.

My two cents

When I had to read Romeo and Juliet in school, I didn't exactly enjoy it. I found it difficult to read (and frankly, thought Romeo and Juliet were a bit stupid). But such is the story of Shakespeare's  lovelorn youths.

This book turns everything upside down in so many ways and I absolutely loved it!

Gone is the stuffiness and over-romanticized version by Shakespeare. This is told from a very unlikely source, Juliet's nurse, Angelica. This retelling is coloured by her class perspective, her loving personality, and her own rather tragic life story.

The love story between Romeo and Juliet seems to be an afterthought. Rather this is a poignant relationship between a loving woman and her ward, with an intriguing twist in this all. The story kept me on tenterhooks as to whether the "secret" would actually come to light. (It's a secret, so I can't spoil this whole book for you!)

This main arc alone would've kept me turning the pages at a fast clip. But there was so much more to enjoy: Juliet and Tybalt's tender childhood friendship, Angelica's own love story (and love making!) as well as rather tragic desire for motherhood, the complicated dynamic between classes, and the machinations of the church in Verona, Italy's everyday life during the Renaissance.

This reminded me so much of my first time reading Philippa Gregory's work where she brings dreary history out of the dregs with the sexual escapades, the intrigue and the conspiracies of the noblemen. It's probably not Shakespeare's intent (especially downplaying Romeo who is quite annoying here) but the story retold from the nurse made this so much more interesting for me!

Verdict: Alternately funny, heartbreaking, and tender, richly layered and wonderfully researched, it puts one of the most beloved love stories in a totally new light. I loved everything about this classical retelling.

If you like Philippa Gregory or are just curious about how Romeo and Juliet can become spicier and even better reading, get a copy.

I received an advanced reader copy from Goodreads First Reads.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

No boring mythology here.

Synopsis of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes. 

My two cents

Throw away the tale of the invincible Achilles foiled because of that vunerable spot in his heel that wasn't touched by the waters of the river Styx. Now replace this with a man-god who falls in love with his childhood friend Patroclus, a man who would follow him to the ends of the earth. But Achilles needs to choose his path: will he answer the call of his destiny to become a god? Or will he choose true happiness with the man he loves?

***

*Sigh.* I've fallen in love. Again.  

This was among my favourite reads for 2013. I had been meaning to review this but I seem to have such a harder time reviewing books I love because I agonize over how to express why I love the book so much. In the meantime, I decided to re-read it and now I have to put this book among my all-time favourites.

I got my first taste of mythology in high school through, you guessed it, Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. I remember I was ahead of the pack in high school because I really enjoyed mythology; something about it just drew me in. Revisiting mythology through this award-winning book was such a treat! I honestly could. not. put. this. down. I remember feeling like this when I first discovered Philippa Gregory... so excited and wanting to read more in the genre! (What is this genre Miller has created, I don't know: mythological retellings?)

If you got bored with mythology in school, this is a far cry from it. This is well written, engaging and entirely accessible. It features a bevy of gods and goddesses but with oh-so-human feelings and personalities. There is drama, love, backstabbing and politicking, and epic heroic battle. There are lessons to be learned. There are stories to be immortalized.

This is about tortured souls, heartache, and ambition. The golden boy Achilles torn between true happiness of loving and of the call of his destiny for godhood. The weakling Patroclus who eventually grows into his own and is torn between protecting Achilles' reputation as a god-man and of declaring to the world his love. The chilling sea nymph Thetis is torn by her raw ambition for her son's success and her deep love for him. 

If you want to feel every emotion, hang on every word said, and find out how this love story plays out, I urge you to pick this up. I am willing to bet that you will love it just like I did.

There are books. And there are books that are a cut above the rest. This one is way above those.

Verdict: An intimate retelling of the love story between the mythological characters of Achilles and Patroclus, this book will throw away any misconceptions that mythology is dull or boring and will seal your love of all things Madeline Miller.

Shout out to Ellie of Curiosity Killed the Bookworm -- I won this over on her blog during a Literary Giveaway Blog Hop last year!

Book Depository

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Not a Snow White for me, it was an Alice. 

Synopsis of Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi: In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman.

A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.

Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.

My two cents

Boy (despite the name, is female) lives with her abusive father, who ekes out a living as a rat catcher in 1950s New York. She escapes the drudgery of her existence by simply hopping on to a bus to nowhere, anywhere, finding herself in the small town of Flax Hill in Massachusetts. There she starts life anew.

Boy marries a soft-spoken widower, Arturo Whitman. He has a beautiful daughter, Snow, who is doted upon by the entire Whitman family. The birth of their baby girl, Bird, reveals a secret of the Whitman family has been keeping -- they are pale-skinned Afro-Americans pretending to be white. White-skinned Snow is sent away to relatives.

The sisters grow up in separate homes but eventually reestablish contact. They become close and in their letters back and forth, they slowly realize that their families have more secrets begging to be revealed.

***

This entire novel is jarring. I felt like Alice slowly falling into the rabbit hole. The beginning started out wonderfully, albeit a little strange, but I suspended all judgement. But it got curiouser and curiouser ... and weirder and weirder.

What I liked: 

I felt that the book held great promise because of the themes it set out to explore. It touches upon race, interracial marriages, standards of beauty, and towards the end, gender. These are difficult subjects to write about but Oyeyemi manages to weave these into her story in a unique way, allowing room for the reader to ponder and make their own judgements.

The writing has a beautiful fantastical quality to it and there are tinges of magical realism. There is the allegory to Snow White—a snake in jewelry, recurring references to the "mirror, mirror on the wall,"  Bird claims not to show up in mirrors, and other odd little references which get the reader asking "true? or metaphor?"

The cover. I would pick this up just based on the cover. There I said it.

What I disliked:

Problematic storyline: Overall, I felt that this was half-finished (or is it half-edited?) as the arch of the storyline started out in one direction then suddenly veered away from what was built up.

When I finished I felt that I'd been taken for a ride. I was "What? What the heck happened there? I expected it to have a nice overall thread but then the author springs a totally different storyline! It is one thing to be blindsided by a logical revelation and another thing to have a rabbit coming out of hat! (Note that I have an Advance Reader Copy so I am unsure whether this is going to be final.)

Half-baked characters: What interesting characters Boy, Snow and Bird are! Unfortunately, they never really endeared themselves to me. The two better characters are Boy and Bird. Boy with her terrible childhood roused some sympathy in the beginning but I found she was quite flat throughout. Bird was interesting but she felt "old" in her dialogue; I couldn't put my finger on it but she seemed to somehow morph into Boy to me at some points in the story.

The "weaker characters were Snow and Arturo Whitman. Snow who was sent away seemed too, too nice when finally face-to-face with the woman who had "banished" her from a loving home (wouldn't you hold a grudge?). And Arturo Whitman seemed like an afterthought, his romance with Boy that didn't quite seem to be real, and who really didn't seem to have much to say about his backstory—he seems dry and passionless. (Mia was more memorable than him and yet she was  minor minor character!)

Iffy back book blurb. Touting that a book is a mash-up or re-telling (think Cinder) could go very, very badly. While it wasn't bad per se for this book, it didn't help it, setting up false expectations. The Snow White allegory was there but it certainly wasn't the highlight.

Verdict: Not a Snow White for me, it was an Alice, and that's not a compliment. A promising storyline that fails to deliver on so many levels.

 

Release: March 2014
320 pages
I received a copy of the book through Penguin.ca's Bloggers and Books Network in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Elizabeth!

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Made little sense to me, and shook my sensibilities!

About Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope: From Joanna Trollope, one of the most insightful chroniclers of family life writing fiction today, comes a contemporary retelling of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s classic novel of love, money, and two very different sisters.

John Dashwood promised his dying father that he would take care of his half sisters. But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate. When she descends upon Norland Park, the three Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—are faced with the realities of a cold world and the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.

With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Reimagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel’s romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change...

My two cents

Does reading this count as a classic? Probably not. The problem with re-tellings or re-imaginings is that it's difficult to say anything when you haven't read the original (or I did read it but it was forgettable because it was required reading?) So I guess I'm not really qualified to say anything. *Shrug*

Overall, I would treat this as a nice fluffy read, like chick lit. It's fun, it's got lots of girly drama, and it's easy reading. I found myself quite drawn to Elinor's spunk and gumption and Marianne's dreamy romanticism.

Now, what really threw me off and made me roll my eyes quite a few times was the strange disconnect ... I think the modern setting and the rather dated attitudes didn't really mesh well. Just because the author throws in multiple references to the iPod, iPads, laptops, social media and other modernities doesn't instantaneously update a story! Some stories are best left in the era they were written.

For example, I was slightly weirded out how Belle and her three daughters ended up becoming destitute. Living off old money in a ridiculous sounding house, and being beholden to others for a place to live ... does this even happen in this day and age? And Elinor being forced to drop out of school ... is financial aid or any sort of scholarship not possible for someone as smart as Elinor? And the theatrics in many places ... man, oh, man.

I read this thinking that I would love this to the high heavens and I would lure me into reading the original. I will be definitely be reading the original if only to get the thought of this nonsensical modern retelling out of my head.

Verdict: As a non-Austen reader, I had problems with how transplanting a classic tale did not translate well into modern times. However, if you have read Sense and Sensibility, you may want to see what this re-telling does ... and maybe set me straight! :)

Photo credit: Barker Evans

About Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope is the #1 bestselling author of eighteen novels, including The Soldier’s Wife, Daughters-in-Law, Friday Nights, The Other Family, Marrying the Mistress, and The Rector’s Wife. Her works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and several have been adapted for television. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1996 for her services to literature, and served as the Chair of Judges for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012. She lives in London and Gloucestershire.

Find out more about Joanna on her website.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately it arrived too late for the scheduled TLC Book Tour.  

Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer

Mash-up of Cinderella and Terminator
Synopsis via: Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

My two cents

Cinderella. Evil stepmother. Step sisters. New Beijing. Cyborg. Wait, we are talking about Cinderella, right?

No, not at all. Kudos to Marissa Meyer for cooking up this imaginative new take on the classic fairytale Cinderella. We all know it -- a beautiful girl whose father dies and is left at the hands of her cruel stepmother and two stepsisters. With the help of a fairy godmother, Cinderella is transformed; she meets the prince, turns back to her non-glamorous self, hides out yet is eventually found by the Prince ... and they live happily ever after.

Except in this case Cinderella is Cinder Linh, who was an orphan taken in by an inventor during his travels to Europe. Unfortunately the inventor dies and she left in the care of her unfeeling stepmother, who has two daughters. The setting is a futuristic world where humans still rule yet are under siege by aliens, held abay only because of intergalactic treaties. Cinder is actually a cyborg, a second-class citizen in this day; she is quickly put to work by her stepmother to earn her keep -- she is a brilliant mechanic. One day, a disguised Prince Kai, the heir to the throne of New Beijing, shows up in her shop, with a top secret task.

Uh-ohs

When I first started it, I was expecting it to be closer to the Cinderella story but it was a nice surprise to find that Meyer had merely taken elements of it and created something creative and innovative! The beginning was fine -- I think I was still in a bit of awe that the story was so creative -- but maybe a quarter into it, I felt like I knew what the big reveal would be, and it started to go downhill for me.

So much material, so outlandish, built-up anticipation, so much promise... but sadly, the world building, the plot is rather predictable, and the characters (or sets of characters) aren't quite fleshed out. I know this is a high standard to judge this against, but I keep thinking back to Tolkien's Middle Earth and feel it actually exists. Or the fact that I would know what an elf looks like, or what dwarves hate, or their complicated histories. I don't question Middle Earth and its inhabitants because Tolkien created them so vividly.

I had more questions in my mind and there are some strange illogical little twists drove me a little batty. There wasn't sufficient elaboration to sate my curiosity about this whole world -- it felt "unstable" to me. I am hoping that the books that follow will flesh out the characters and the setting a little more.

For example, New Beijing: Am I the only one expecting some more Asian flavour in the setting, the customs, the food, the language, etc? The Lunars: More on the back story please and why their strange powers. Cinder, while brilliant as a mechanic, seems to be really stupid: she seems to be in the habit of spreading the deadly plague and despite her sister falling ill, does it once again (read the book, you'll see what I mean).

This feels like a first draft of a wonderful idea. It would make a great introduction for younger readers (say young teens to teenagers) to classics like Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien or His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. But it doesn't have enough meat for me to rave about it.

And lastly, Cinder Linh? I'm going to sound like such a nitpicker, but I know I am going to get a lot of flak for this review anyway. So I'll say it: wasn't the character's name Ella?

Verdict: A inventive sci-fi treatment of the classic fairytale of Cinderella, this fell flat in terms of unfleshed out world building, characters and a rather predictable plot. I would recommend it for younger readers who want something fresh and fun!

Special thanks to Kelley of A Novel Read for a copy of this book through her giveaway during Sci-Fi Month! I will be passing on this book to spread some bookish love!