Invisible, Yet Eternal: A Reflection on By Any Other Name
By Nasser Khawla
I finished By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult with a lingering sense of wonder — perplexed, moved, and deeply reflective. It wasn’t just the story that held me, but the ending. The moment Milena stepped onto the stage to present the play she had written, a play bearing the same title as the novel itself, I felt the past and present fold into each other. It was as if the last person she saw — her grandmother, her ancestor, the silver-eyed woman from generations before — had gently pushed her forward.
Milena wasn’t just stepping into her own spotlight. She was completing a circle, fulfilling a story that had begun long before her birth. A story planted like a seed in the silence of women who had been denied the right to write, to express, to be named. Her ancestor, like many women of her time, was forbidden to be a poet, to let her words live under her own name. So she borrowed Shakespeare — or rather, Shakespeare borrowed her. Her words were hidden beneath his name, because it was the only way they could survive.
And survive they did.
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She chose invisibility not because she lacked voice, but because she valued it so much she was willing to vanish if it meant her words could stay. Her poetry became her ghost, her legacy. And Milena, unknowingly, became her vessel.
That moment on stage wasn’t just a literary climax. It was a resurrection. Her ancestor’s words, once buried, were now being spoken, heard — and, in Milena’s eyes, seen. It was a quiet revolution. A happy ending for a woman who never got one. A comedy, in the classical sense, that follows tragedy and transforms it into something new.
The novel reminded me that life, too, is both comedy and tragedy. That pain and hope are partners, not opposites. And that legacy isn’t always visible. Sometimes, like the tree planted by hands long gone, we may not sit in its shade — but someone will. That’s the work. That’s the meaning. You write, you speak, you live — not for the prize, but because it’s worth doing.
This, to me, is the heartbeat of the novel: that doing the work, putting in the effort, is more important than the outcome. That invisible work may one day become visible to someone else. That the love, passion, care, and tears we pour into life are not wasted, even if we don’t live to see their fruits.
I loved this book. Because it reminded me that our lives — like the stories we write — can be both unseen and unforgettable.
