I have no idea what I just read or if I liked it.

Gilman twists and warps and twirls early modern language into something mystical and beyond itself. It walks a tight line between masterful and convoluted mess.

This story holds such a playful relationship with its sources, and one of the reasons I was so excited to pick this book up is because of its experimental formatting, designed to mimic the appearance of a early modern quarto. But I actually think Gilman could have leaned even further into this mimicry in certain textual aspects that would’ve served the story AND offered an aid to the reader. I would’ve loved a dramatis personae, as I kept getting the characters confused. And some scenes were so dialogue heavy that they practically begged to be formatted as a play script. 

I definitely think I would need to read this at least 2 more times to actually understand it, and this is coming from someone who reads a lot of Elizabethan and Jacobean text and scholarship. But wow, what a weird little story.

CW: murder, sexual violence, g-slur, plague (past), suicide (mention), grief, child death, alcohol