Friday, March 16, 2012

Book Note: The Weird Sisters

Brown, Eleanor. The Weird Sisters. New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2011.

This novel isn't a retelling of a Shakespeare plot—even though it does involve three sisters and their relationship with their father (and their mother, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and is more in the background). But it is peppered with Shakespeare quotes and allusions, including the names of the protagonists: Rose (Rosalind), Bean (Bianca), and Cordy (Cordelia). Their father is a Shakespeare professor, after all.

The novel doesn't just use Shakespeare as a gimmick. There's real depth to the way each of the characters uses Shakespeare to interpret his or her life experiences—and that usage is sometimes interestingly called into question.

This is just a brief mention of the book. The blog Lifetime Reading Plan has reviewed the novel more fully. Indeed, that blog's author graciously sent me her copy when she was done with it. In turn, I've sent it on to ShakespeareGeek—and no one knows where it will go from there!

Update: See what ShakespeareGeek has to say about it!

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

1 comment:

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The Weird Sisters is on my book club's wish list. I'm even on the waiting list at the library!

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.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest