Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Book Note: Still Star-Crossed

Taub, Melinda. Still Star-Crossed. New York: Delacorte Press, 2013.

The new show on ABC called Still Star-Crossed is based on a novel of the same title by Melinda Taub.  I couldn't be around for the premire of the show, so I thought I'd try the novel first (which is generally my modus operandi in any case).

Readers of Bardfilm have heard me say that something "isn't my cup of tea" but that I could recognize its merits for the intended audience.

This novel just isn't my cup of tea.

[By the way, if Shakespeare Geek is to be trusted (and he generally is), the show will likewise not be my cup of tea.]

The setting is Shakespeare-y, and some of the dialogue tries to be Shakespeare-esque as well, but aside from a few flashbacks, we don't get much Romeo and Juliet or Romeo or Juliet. Nor is there much character development along the lines of the characters in Shakespeare's play.  Rosaline is our female lead; she and Benvolio utterly hate each other at the beginning of the novel (can you imagine what might happen by the end of the book?). But Rosaline, of course, never actually appears in Shakespeare's play, and this Benvolio isn't much like that Benvolio.

For those of you who may find this more like the tea you keep in cups, here are the opening two pages:





And here's a sample of the Shakespeare-ish style:


Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
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3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Hello.
Anyone knows who is the model in te jacketbook?
Thanks!

kj said...

I'm not sure. You might track down a copy to see if there's any indication of who did the cover art for the book!

Thanks!

kj

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

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