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What is that empty fancy sportscar doing in the middle of a field in coastal Ireland? Wyms, a peculiar hermit, comes across the car and tracks down the man who abandoned it to a nearby cottage rented by a couple, Charles and Charlotte. The fellow’s name is Armitage and he’s acting very oddly. Armitage says he and his wife had had a fight; she ran off and disappeared, possibly over the cliff. The police launch a search that yields nothing. An inspector brought from Dublin continues the investigation. He is burdened by his past, as well as a raft of current relationship problems. Ultimately, we discover connections between the main characters, and they’re very dark indeed. The sensation of drowning, literally or figuratively, pervades the book and creates an atmosphere of intensity and despair that I found very haunting.
How could Shakespeare have written all those plays? Theories are legion, but in this remarkable novel, Picoult zeroes in on Emilia. She wrote many plays but had to sell them to Shakespeare, which he then claimed as his own. That was the only way they’d be produced and besides, she really needed the money. She also had a book of poems published under her name, almost unprecedented for a woman of the time. Her story is fraught—she was orphaned, then well-educated and groomed to become the mistress of the man who oversaw all the theatrical productions in England. In a contemporary parallel story, Melina, a descendant of Emilia, is a playwright thwarted by misogyny. On impulse, her Black gay roommate submits her play to a festival by shortening her first name to Mel and it gets chosen. He pretends to be the playwright with Melina as his “assistant” and they have to keep up the pretext for quite a stretch. Picoult studs the book with familiar lines from well-known Shakespeare plays and when they come out of Emilia’s mouth, it gives them special resonance. Very well-researched and extremely lively.
I was imprinted by the wonderful drawings of Pfeiffer’s characters long ago; in his new graphic novel, supposedly for children, they still cavort with full-bodied glee. Mommy sings her refashioned anthem of the title and then tells her three offspring she’s off on a quest. It gets extremely weird extremely fast and the kids face all sorts of bizarre adventures. Like a ride on a two-headed duck (or swan—who knows which), into many dimensions, some of which are existentially scary. Mysterious fun. I do wonder what kids would make of it.
June is an adjunct professor, trying to complete a book so she can get tenure. Her family—artist husband and two kids—have been making do with various substandard dwellings until a friend, Brett, offers them his swanky LA house. On sabbatical, June hopes writing will flow but she gets mired in an enormous exploration of the mulatto in history which reflects her own mixed-race experience. Her agent declares the book a dud. In desperation she pitches her skills to a TV producer and feverish brainstorming on spec fuels expectations of prosperity. Her hopes crash after she can't come up with entertaining scenarios and there’s a wicked plot twist at the end. One irony among many: June had put down television as frivolous as contrasted with the serious weight of literature but had to embrace it as more relevant, and lucrative when push came to shove.
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