Review: Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George

Publication Date: September 19th 2017
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Pages: 432 pages

Six teenagers’ lives intertwine during one thrilling summer full of romantic misunderstandings and dangerous deals in this sparkling retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
After she gets kicked out of boarding school, seventeen-year-old Beatrice goes to her uncle’s estate on Long Island. But Hey Nonny Nonny is more than just a rundown old mansion. Beatrice’s cousin, Hero, runs a struggling speakeasy out of the basement—one that might not survive the summer. Along with Prince, a poor young man determined to prove his worth; his brother John, a dark and dangerous agent of the local mob; Benedick, a handsome trust-fund kid trying to become a writer; and Maggie, a beautiful and talented singer; Beatrice and Hero throw all their efforts into planning a massive party to save the speakeasy. Despite all their worries, the summer is beautiful, love is in the air, and Beatrice and Benedick are caught up in a romantic battle of wits that their friends might be quietly orchestrating in the background.

Much Ado About Nothing has to be my favourite Shakespeare. I love the sass, the banter, the characters - and that love affair can be traced back to the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson adaptation in the 90s which I still love re-watching. So when I came across Angie's review (which essentially was a love letter to this retelling) it was a no brainer that of course I was going to pick it up.

With such high hopes and a dizzying array of nerves (how could the story really work transplanted into the 1920s?) I was nervous when I opened to the first page, but within the first few sentences I was laughing and most of the way to falling in love with Benedick Scott, and utterly utterly smitten.

This cast of characters is utterly glorious. McKelle has taken the essence of the play, and then filled it with her own glorious originality and charm. It is funny, biting, the characters are real and wonderful and flawed, and I fell in love with each of them over the course of the book. She shows the original wit, and then plumbs each character for new depths, compelling, complex, shades of grey instead of black and white. I adored the new facets given to John and Maggie for example, turning them into complex and fascinating people that I wanted to spend more time with.

Not since Blue and her boys in The Raven Cycle have I fallen so hard and fast for a misfit group. They stole my heart and I found myself in turns laughing and then moved to tears at this beautiful and fresh retelling. There is lightness, romance and humour certainly, but McKelle twists that deftly with hardship and raw grit and emotion. This story has hard edges beneath the softness and humour, and it makes it all the more powerful and beautiful.


(Side note: Chapter titles created from original bits of dialogue from the play? BE STILL MY HEART.)

In short, this book is wonderful. Ultimately this will be one of my favourite reads of the year, and will be gifted to several people at Christmas to spread the joy and beauty of this book. It is a gem of a book, one that I will return to repeatedly, and one that deserves more notice than it has received.
Read it. Read it now.

Review: The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

Publication Date: October 6^th 2015
Publisher: Hogarth Books
Length: 288 pages

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's “late plays”. It tells the story of Leontes, King of Sicily, whose insane jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter, Perdita, from the kingdom and then the death of his beautiful wife, Hermione. Perdita is brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of miraculous events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited. 
In Jeanette Winterson's retelling we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crash, to a storm-ravaged city in the US called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, video games and the elliptical nature of time. It tells in a hyper-modern way, full of energy and beauty, of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and love, redemption and a lost child on the other.

It’s rare these days that I get to go into a bookstore and pick up a random book that I know nothing about. With so many books on my to read pile, so many on my radar waiting for release dates, and so few English language books available for me to go and browse whilst I’m living in France, it understandably turns into a giddy and fun experience to wander through a UK bookshop and pick up books I know nothing about based on no more than an eye catching cover and an intriguing blurb.

“The Gap of Time” is one of those finds. A beautifully simplistic and engaging cover that caught my attention, and the possibility of a Shakespeare re-telling for a play that doesn’t get nearly as much coverage as some of his other works – colour me intrigued.

Luckily the insides more than lived up to the promises given, and I was enthralled from the opening line. ‘The Winter’s Tale’ is not a play that I’ve studied as extensively as some of Shakespeare’s other works, so it was nice that a brief summary of the play is included at the start to get you up to speed. It does take away a little of the mystery of what’s going to happen if you aren’t familiar with the play already, but it’s also a nice opening that allows you to sink into the story and appreciate it for what it is – a beautiful re-working.

It is stunningly written, filled with short sharp sentences, and passages and turns of phrase that took my breath away. It reminded me of ‘The Night Circus’ with some of the lyrically beautiful prose and I found myself quickly becoming lost in the story.

“In this night soaked bed with you, it is courage for the day I seek. That when the light comes I will turn towards it. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be harder. And in the morning we will get dressed together and go.”

My only issue came with Leo, who ends up coming across as a forced caricature, desperately shoe horned into a stereotype that works in the original play, but doesn’t in this. He’s flat, one dimensional and his ‘madness’ scenes were utterly bizarre. I couldn’t connect or understand, and that section was thoroughly jarring in relation to the rest of the novel. That was the only thing that stopped this breath taking book from being a full five star read for me.

Aside from that, I adored this book. It was a surprise find that enchanted me from the start. Full of beautiful passages and intriguing characters, this is a wonderful re-telling that brings Shakespeare’s tale to life in new and exciting ways. I cannot wait to see the rest of these re-tellings as they are released.

“That night, storm and rain and the moon like a mandala when the clouds parted, it was the moon that made him know. The baby had lain like the visible corner of a folded map. Traced inside her, faded now, were parents she would never know and a life that had vanished. Alternative routes she wouldn’t take. People she would never meet. The would-be-that-wouldn’t-be.
Because her mother or her father, or both, had left the map of her folded on the table and left the room.
It was a map of discovery. There were no more North Poles or Atlantic Oceans or Americas. The moon had been visited. And the bottom of the sea.
But she was setting out with the blank sheet and a compass of herself.
Unpathed waters. Undreamed shores.”

Review: Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell

Publication Date: August 25^th 2015
Publisher: Clarion Books
Length: 304 pages

Nicolette’s awful stepsisters call her “Mechanica” to demean her, but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mother’s knee. Her mom is gone now, though, and the Steps have turned her into a servant in her own home. 
But on her sixteenth birthday, Nicolette discovers a secret workshop in the cellar and begins to dare to imagine a new life for herself. Could the mysterious books and tools hidden there—and the mechanical menagerie, led by a tiny metal horse named Jules—be the key to escaping her dreary existence? With a technological exposition and royal ball on the horizon, the timing might just be perfect for Nicolette to earn her freedom at last.
Gorgeous prose and themes of social justice and family shine in this richly imagined Cinderella retelling about an indomitable inventor who finds her prince . . . but realizes she doesn't want a fairy tale happy ending after all.

I was very excited to get stuck into this one, and whilst I did really enjoy this fresh take on the Cinderella story (strong independent woman!) there were a few problems that stopped it being the favourite I had been hoping it would turn into.

Nick is a fantastic protagonist. I did have a couple of issues with her and the romance which I will discuss in a moment, but first I want to talk about what I loved. She’s intelligent, she’s feisty and determined, she’s incredibly clever and talented. And the best part? Unlike the original story where she has to rely on her fairy godmother and the Prince to rescue her from her life of drudgery, in ‘Mechanica’ she rescues herself. Yes she has friends and support, but she pulls herself up, she rolls up her sleeves and gets stuff done and turns her own situation around which I really loved.

I loved the steampunk elements – it’s not traditional full steampunk, and anyone worrying that it will be too similar to ‘Cinder’ your fears are unfounded, these are two very different books. The mechanical inventions and magic are worked in beautifully and I loved seeing Nick at work and the little titbits we’re shown of her relationship with her mother. They’re both incredible inventors and I thought that was a truly gorgeous new twist – particularly when we see the attitude towards women and their inventions in this world. I loved how they subvert expectations to create these stunning pieces and the transition from Nick’s mother having to pretend that her inventions are made by her husband, to Nick standing proud beside her inventions. It’s definitely a female empowerment story, and it’s done brilliantly.

However, one of my biggest issues was the romance. Nick meets Fin twice, maybe three times, and yeah ok he’s ridiculously hot and he’s actually been nice to her which at this point in her life is a rarity – crush away dear girl, I completely understand. But then she stars having imaginary conversations with him. She freely admits that she spends most of her time imagining conversations and situations and builds up this entire person in her head that she later says she doesn’t think she could have survived without. This is up there with insta-love for me – a love built up out of nothing. Of imaginings. It really didn’t work for me and I found any of their interactions following that to be really uncomfortable as a result.

The romance and relationships as a whole are handled quite poorly, so if you’re after the traditional happily ever after you’ll be sorely disappointed. Similarly whilst some elements of the friendships worked really well, there were other parts that really didn’t and left me feeling frustrated by various actions and conversations. The pacing is also a little off so the story lags quite terribly in several places, but the imagination that infuses it definitely helps to pick up the slack and kept me interested.

So whilst I loved a lot of this fresh reinvention of Cinderella, there were enough niggles and problems for it not to quite hit favourite status. However I really recommend picking it up, if only for the magical inventions and the empowered self sufficient Cinderella.