Monday, April 14, 2025

Book Note: All Our Yesterdays

Morris, Joel H. All Our Yesterdays: A Novel of Lady Macbeth. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024.

I'm afraid I have one more Macbeth novelization that's been on a lot of "Best Modern Shakespearean Novels" lists lately. 

Queen Macbeth tells the uninspiring (but historically-accurate—it claims) story of Lady Macbeth and her child (Macbeth's, but conceived when she was married to someone else).

In All Our Yesterdays, the child is Lady Macbeth's and her then-husband's, but he is raised by Macbeth as an adopted son once Macbeth and Lady Macbeth marry.

Unlike Queen Macbeth, this novel doesn't claim to be fixing the historical errors in Shakespeare's play. But, like Queen Macbeth, All Our Yesterdays is a very dull account of what might be quite a fascinating backstory for the plot Shakespeare gives us. The Lady Macbeth Analogue is called "The Lady" throughout; her son is called "The Boy." This has the (intentional?) effect of distancing us from them rather than the (more justifiably-intentional) effect of making them universal characters.

All Our Yesterdays is just as tedious as Queen Macbeth, but it's much longer.

I'm sorry, but I cannot recommend this novel.

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Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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