Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite...
Once more into the breech with quirky historical fiction: della Quercia (The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, 2014) turns the Gunpowder Plot into a stage for Will Shakespeare to assume the role of a 17th-century James Bond.
The premise is simple: Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are drawn into Guy Fawkes' revolutionary schemes. With Spanish-English-Ottoman conspiracies and Roman Catholic attempts to subvert Protestant expansionism, brilliant young Marlowe becomes the Venetian eyes and ears of Sir Thomas Walsingham, the realm’s spymaster. In London, Guy Fawkes persuades—threatens?—Will into writing a special play. Opening night will ignite a rebellious spark when Double, double, toile and trouble is declaimed, a line somehow related to "cunning folk" (Celtic witches) Fawkes’ conspirators have recruited into their rebellious plot. Loyal Will informs Walsingham, who dispatches him to Sir Francis Bacon, irascible genius chief of the Ordnance Office. The narrative is dotted with footnotes identifying historical gems—for example, the way Venice was a refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews. But it’s the characters, real and imagined, who race into memory—Will, wily and loyal; Marlowe, courageous and hedonistic; Bianca, the Dark Lady, peasant-born Jewish converso–turned-nun, then spy and assassin, then Shakespeare’s lover. Della Quercia beautifully describes a plague-riven London ripe with "horses, hagglers, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, clowns, jugglers, jargon, gossip, and swearing" and the sorcerer’s dark lair in Warkwickshire’s Forest of Arden. Full of puns—"Bless my sole "—and wordplay—"woad warriors"—this historical thriller is also an homage to Ian Fleming’s James Bond–ian world: Will becomes a "Double OO operative" and reports to Sir Thomas Walsingham, who's known as "W" and has a secretary named Penny, who fancies the agent.
Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite tour de force.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05965-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Much is made in these pages about the power of make-believe, and while the book falls short of magical, it’s still an...
The story behind the story that became the legendary movie The Wizard of Oz.
Letts (The Perfect Horse, 2016, etc.) builds her historical novel around Maud Gage Baum, the high-spirited wife of L. Frank Baum, who wrote the original Wizard of Oz books. In one of two intercut narratives, the 77-year-old Maud, who’d exerted a strong influence on her late husband, appears on the set of the movie in 1938; there, she encounters 16-year-old Judy Garland—cast as Dorothy—among others. The second narrative opens in Fayetteville, New York, in 1871 and traces Maud’s life from age 10: her girlhood as the daughter of an ardent suffragette; her brief time at Cornell University—she was one of the first women admitted there; her early marriage to Baum, an actor at the time; and the births of their four sons. Frank, a dreamer, was not so talented at making money, and the family endured a hardscrabble, peripatetic life until he scored as a writer. This part of the story is dramatic and sometimes-poignant, though it goes on a bit. (Read carefully, and you can spot some elements that made their ways into the books and movie.) The Hollywood part is more entertaining even if some of it feels implausible. Maud did meet Judy Garland and attend the premiere of the film in real life. But in the book she tries to protect and nurture Garland, who was at the mercy of her abusive stage mother and the filmmakers and was apparently fed amphetamines to keep her weight down. And while it’s true the movie’s best-loved song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” was almost cut at the last minute, the book has Maud persuading studio chief L.B. Mayer to keep it in.
Much is made in these pages about the power of make-believe, and while the book falls short of magical, it’s still an absorbing read.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-62210-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.
Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
