Reviews

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

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readingjules's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

annamccauley's review against another edition

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emotional informative

4.5

ppppaula's review

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informative slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

3.5

I have really mixed feelings about this one. I usually love Jodi Picoult’s stories and was interested in the subject - that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by other people, including the main character of this book, Emilia. I also usually enjoy a dual timeline. I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters and found the overall tone negative and ranty. I realise that the treatment of women was different in the 1500s, and Emilia did not have an easy life, but it all just felt so angry. I also don’t understand why the narrative heaped so much hate on Shakespeare himself - deriding his character and how he looked, especially when his name being put on the plays was essentially a business transaction for all involved. It also felt like box ticking with the gay best friend in each timeline. This was a long book and I skim read some parts just to get through it. I am keen to revisit the whole who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays if it wasn’t him, and whether that is even a plausible theory, but by a different author. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood for this and maybe it is an amazing book but it just didn’t work for me.

scijessreads's review against another edition

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4.0

Emilia Bassano is a woman - a girl, really - in the late 1500s whose station in life is entirely at the whims of men. When she finds herself as mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, she begins to see that there may yet be a way for her love of stories to come to life. But along the way she finds heartbreak, and trials, and runs into wall after wall that society has erected to keep women down and deny them a chance to live a life not yoked to a man.

Melina Green is a young playwright whose life takes a turn after a disastrous meeting with a critic who does not see the value in her writing. Through a series of choices (and a drunken error in judgment by her friend Andre), Melina’s latest play finds a home, but not exactly under her own name. What her play also finds is the same critic that had previously knocked Melina off course. Could she make things turn out differently this time?

We see the parallels and deviations of Melina’s and Emilia’s lives unfold in dual timelines. Emilia is actually a distant relative of Melina and is thought to be a contender for the person who may have actually written plays published under the William Shakespeare name. Melina’s new play is a journey to give this theory new life, to show how then, as now, women were not afforded the same opportunities as men. How they must fight for visibility, or fall victim to their own names being lost forever to those of a man.

I loved this book. It is a candid look at what women have endured - and continue to endure - to get recognition. How the structures of society and community afford usually white men to be the gatekeepers of what gets made, and can often fail to recognize the value in stories that are not of their own or a similar experience. I loved both timelines and stories, but Emilia’s was particularly heartbreaking. To see everything she fought through, to be relegated to footnotes and forgotten history until Melina managed to bring her back to the light. The lives of both women are woven together in a story that has universal themes that we could all take a moment to interrogate more closely.

I read this book early as an ARC from Netgalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.