"New Boy" by Tracy Chevalier

This was another Half Price Books find. I have enjoyed a number of other books by Tracy Chevalier; she's one of a small handful of authors I am automatically drawn to as they consistently write high-quality books.

New Boy is part of a series by various authors, each book based on a work by Shakespeare--this one a retelling of Othello, with the twist that the main characters are children on the playground of an elementary school in 1970s suburban Washington, DC.

I was unfortunately not familiar with the plot of Othello, beyond the knowledge that the title character was a lone black man surrounded by white characters. In New Boy, Osei (Othello) has just moved to the area. On his first day of school, he befriends Dee (Desdemona) and they quickly become enamored of one another. But Ian (Iago), playground bully and puppet master, sets out to destroy their happiness by planting and carefully tending seeds of jealousy until they sprout and grow, monstrous and destructive.

I found as I read that I wished I knew the story of Othello better, although New Boy can certainly stand on its own. There were also parts of the book where I wished the conversations seemed more natural (usually during a cacophony of voices on the playground) and I figured those sections might have been based on Shakespeare's chorus. These minor detriments aside, I enjoyed the read.

It did cross my mind, though, to wonder if retellings such as these are necessary. Do they add anything to the original work? Or do they have a value all their own? My personal opinion (after reading the plot summary of Othello on wikipedia) is that New Boy seems more relatable and realistic to me. It's definitely more similar to the life I have lived, and the smaller-scale tragedies seem like something that could happen any day.