Scan barcode
A review by bethreadsandnaps
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
3.5
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Jodi Picoult delivers a powerful takedown of Shakespeare with her feminist storytelling in BY ANY OTHER NAME, publishing August 20, 2024.
In this dual timeline novel, the modern timeline has budding playwright Melina ravaged by critic Jasper Tolle and when she finds Jasper will be the judge for the play about Emilia Bassone, her roommate Andre drunkenly submits the play under “Mel” (male) and Andre becomes Mel while Melina becomes his assistant Andrea.
In the past timeline, the reader follows Emilia through her life: husbands, true love, a child, pregnancy loss, poems, plays, and how Shakespeare may have been a broker instead of a playwright, with her actually (potentially) penning some of his most famous plays.
I thought this was a great concept, and I really appreciated all of her research and the great author’s note! I think the author may have spent so much time researching that both strands of the story (Emilia’s and Melina’s) felt incomplete. It’s not due to length. This novel is very long. It didn’t have Picoult’s normal propulsiveness, and I didn’t feel very invested in either Melina or Emilia.
Emilia was an Italian Jew in the late 1500s, and I wanted to learn more about what that was like, but the reader doesn’t get anything about that beyond childhood. As a child, her family hid their culture. Did she abandon her Jewish culture or still practice it in adulthood? The narrative didn’t say.
Emilia experienced many losses throughout her life but also met two great loves - one personal and one professional.
Like Picoult usually does, there is a theme (men taking or getting credit for women’s accomplishments), and it can be heavy-handed when it comes through in both sides of the narratives. But it’s very true to life.
Melina was tougher to get to know, and it really felt like the author started to run out of steam and jumped forward in time to hurriedly wrap up that arc. The romance was forced and that whole plot line didn’t really work for me.
Well-researched but not as compelling of characters as a reader might expect.
#byanyothername #jodipicoult #netgalley #netgalleyreview
Jodi Picoult delivers a powerful takedown of Shakespeare with her feminist storytelling in BY ANY OTHER NAME, publishing August 20, 2024.
In this dual timeline novel, the modern timeline has budding playwright Melina ravaged by critic Jasper Tolle and when she finds Jasper will be the judge for the play about Emilia Bassone, her roommate Andre drunkenly submits the play under “Mel” (male) and Andre becomes Mel while Melina becomes his assistant Andrea.
In the past timeline, the reader follows Emilia through her life: husbands, true love, a child, pregnancy loss, poems, plays, and how Shakespeare may have been a broker instead of a playwright, with her actually (potentially) penning some of his most famous plays.
I thought this was a great concept, and I really appreciated all of her research and the great author’s note! I think the author may have spent so much time researching that both strands of the story (Emilia’s and Melina’s) felt incomplete. It’s not due to length. This novel is very long. It didn’t have Picoult’s normal propulsiveness, and I didn’t feel very invested in either Melina or Emilia.
Emilia was an Italian Jew in the late 1500s, and I wanted to learn more about what that was like, but the reader doesn’t get anything about that beyond childhood. As a child, her family hid their culture. Did she abandon her Jewish culture or still practice it in adulthood? The narrative didn’t say.
Emilia experienced many losses throughout her life but also met two great loves - one personal and one professional.
Like Picoult usually does, there is a theme (men taking or getting credit for women’s accomplishments), and it can be heavy-handed when it comes through in both sides of the narratives. But it’s very true to life.
Melina was tougher to get to know, and it really felt like the author started to run out of steam and jumped forward in time to hurriedly wrap up that arc. The romance was forced and that whole plot line didn’t really work for me.
Well-researched but not as compelling of characters as a reader might expect.
#byanyothername #jodipicoult #netgalley #netgalleyreview