By Any Other Name
Hi everyone, welcome back to Coffee, Books, and Rain, where we are currently in a black cat cosplay. Um, we are testing out the ability for this mask to stay on my face without strings. It is Spirit Gummed to my face, and I am testing its ability to stick.
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I also need to see if it’s going to — um, like, I felt it lift here in the middle, so I know for sure I need more there. And I’m starting to feel the sides kind of — as I move my face — start to loosen. So this is a great way for me to test this out while doing a real-life thing. And so, you guys just get to look at it while I record book reviews.
Today’s book review is *By Any Other Name* by Jodi Picoult. Now, Jodi Picoult is someone who I wasn’t certain if I was going to like her stuff, and I’ll tell you why. Honestly, my personal opinion is there are certain writers who just get a lot of word-of-mouth — they get talked about a lot — and sometimes I’m disappointed when I read them, and sometimes I’m not.
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This was a person that I wasn’t certain about. I had not read her stuff before, but I had heard a lot of things. Now, I hadn’t heard a lot from people who share a similar reading style as me, but I had heard a lot on, like, book talk and things like that.
One thing I will say about Jodi Picoult and this book is that it’s not one of those huge, what I would call, “book talk books.” Surprisingly, and I’m thinking it’s because the demographic is probably just a little bit older — it’s not still in the millennial/Gen Z/Gen Alpha realm of reading. I would say it’s a little bit maybe in the older realm of reading — and not in a bad way.
I would say Kristin Hannah is probably in the same vein. Now, I love Kristin Hannah — I read her book *The Nightingale*, and it was so good. And I’ve seen her book *The Women* like all over the place, so it’s a book that’s on my radar. I just haven’t picked it up yet because I know the trauma that I kind of went through after I read *The Nightingale* — it was so heart-wrenching that it left me with a book hangover.
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So I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve been holding off on reading some Jodi Picoult. I know she’s well thought of in a lot of different reading genres and realms, I guess you could say, by a lot of different readers. I just didn’t know if she was someone I was going to jive with until I got By Any Other Name, and I was kind of intrigued by what I was reading with regards to the summary.
So let’s dive into that, and we’ll go from there.
*By Any Other Name* by Jodi Picoult is releasing on August 20th of 2024. Now, I will say my book podcast received an email from her publishing company just asking if we would review this book. And I know my book co-hosts, Analicia and Hannah, have been incredibly busy with just life in general, and so, even though we might not do a podcast episode for it, I thought it was a book that was worth at least diving into to see what I thought.
And honestly, I’m probably the one of the three of us who this book is not really geared towards — but honestly, I liked it. I’d give it four and a half stars, or four stars for my genre.
The book follows two women, centuries apart, one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, both forced to hide behind another name to make their voices heard. In 1581, Emilia Bassano — like most young women of her day — is allowed no voice of her own. But as the Lord Chamberlain’s mistress, she has access to all theater in England and finds a way to bring her work to the stage secretly.
Yet, creating some of the world’s greatest dramatic masterpieces comes at a great cost. By paying a man for the use of his name, she will write her own out of history.
In the present, playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor, Emilia Bassano. Although the challenges are different 400 years later, the playing field is still not level for women in theater. Would Melina, like Emilia, be willing to forfeit her credit as author just for a chance to see her work performed?
Told in intertwining narratives, this sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire asks what price each woman is willing to pay to see their work live on — even if it means they will be forgotten.
It’s considered historical fiction, contemporary feminism, and “books about books.” The Kindle edition is 528 pages, which was a little daunting for me because I’m not used to reading books that lengthy unless they’re filled with sci-fi, magic, and fantasy.
I’d probably give it four stars on Goodreads — I haven’t left my review yet, but I plan on doing that this weekend. I’m not saying By Any Other Name isn’t good by any means — I thought it was really well-written. I think Jodi Picoult knows her style.
For me, though, I’m not certain this is really the type of book I pick up frequently. Had I heard about the theory that Shakespeare’s works could have been written by a woman? Yes — I have a master’s in literature, and the theory has been postulated. But we’re 500 years removed from that time — will we ever fully know?
This work postulates that maybe Shakespeare didn’t write them — that Emilia borrowed his name and was the true author. And for me, that was a little… I don’t want to say frustrating, but I’m not the biggest Shakespeare fan. I like the works attributed to him, but I’m more of a sonnet person myself.
Some of the language is just difficult to read now, and we’re so far removed from when it was written that, looking back, we find a lot of issues with it.
I think this is a good feminist book — a good book for women about powerful females finding their voice. Jodi Picoult does that incredibly well. I just… I don’t know. I think for me, I was just not the target audience for By Any Other Name, and that’s not derogatory toward the book at all.
I felt a little disconnected from the story. Someone else noted that it seemed to drag at times, and I’d agree — there were points where I didn’t feel like things were moving forward meaningfully.
For someone who likes emotional books, feminist themes, or stories about women overcoming adversity in history, this may be a great read. But for me, I think I’ll stick to my sci-fi and fantasy.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. If you’ve read this book, I’d love to know what you think! Let me know down below, and don’t forget to like and subscribe. Thanks for joining me, and I’ll see you on the next page. Bye!
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gk6mJHGbQ4&pp=ygUdQnkgQW55IE90aGVyIE5hbWUgYm9vayByZXZpZXc%3D
