"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.

“Burning Bright” by Tracy Chevalier

I didn’t like this book as much as I’ve liked others by Chevalier. At first, something about the writing bothered me. Either that wrinkle smoothed out or I got used to it, but I never really got invested in the story, which is tangentially about William Blake. (He lives next door to one of the main characters). I think I would have preferred to read more (or more directly) about Blake than about Jem and Maggie.

This is the 5th Chevalier I’ve read and I only remember really loving one of them (Girl With a Pearl Earring). That's the funny thing about my memory, though (and the good thing about having a book blog): I re-read my posts on the other four books and found that I definitely liked three and only didn't really care for one. I'd rank Burning Bright as #4 of the 5. 

"The Virgin Blue" by Tracy Chevalier

I've now finished my fourth Chevalier. (Three to go . . . eventually. You know how it is.) As expected, I can't fault the writing (not that I ever want to, but with some books I just can't help it) and enjoyed the reading.

This is a dual story about the lives of Ella Turner, contemporary American living in France for the first time after a very recent move, and Isabelle du Moulin, a young French woman of the 16th century. The book follows Ella as she researches her genealogy and navigates the relationships in her life, and spins the story of Isabelle's marriage, while revealing links (a number of which rely on magical realism) between the two women.

The Virgin Blue is not Chevalier's strongest book, and unlike some books where I'm not sure whether they would be too girly for my husband, I'm sure about this one. It would be. But I've certainly read worse.

"The Lady and the Unicorn" by Tracy Chevalier

I've enjoyed two other books by Tracy Chevalier (my favorite was Girl With a Pearl Earring), so I was looking forward to reading this one . . . though it gave me pause when I opened the front cover and the first thing I read was The Washington Post's claim that The Lady and the Unicorn was a "beautifully rendered romance." Ugh, really? I just finished suffering through a romance! But my distress was unfounded. In fact, as I read, I found myself thinking, This is why I read books. Yay! I love that feeling!

I must say I'm tempted to denigrate Chevalier for reusing the framework of Pearl Earring, again taking a famous work of art and building a story around its origin. But I'm not going to bother--I enjoyed the story too much to put my heart into criticism. (And why shouldn't she try it again, as it worked so well the first time?)

This time the story revolves around a series of tapestries woven during the late fifteenth century and is narrated by the designer (a painting Lothario), the lissier who oversaw the tapestries' weaving, and several of the women depicted in the tapestries (including those related to the lissier, and those related to the nobleman who commissioned the work). WOW, it sounds really dry and dull when I describe it that way. But I promise you it wasn't. It maybe all ended a bit too neatly, but otherwise it was a great story. And I was really glad they had full-color pictures of the tapestries to refer to, as kind of a centerfold in the book: it was good to be able to see the different aspects of the works as they were described.

I couldn't help but try to figure out why I liked The Lady and the Unicorn but not Me Before You. This book had luuuurve in it too. But in Chevalier's book the characters seemed more fleshed-out, more three-dimensional, more relatable. And their relationships were more complex and believable. I don't think the fact that the story seems like it could really have happened (and that it seems much more likely than MBY) is a prerequisite for savoring a book--I've loved many a fantastical and unrealistic story. Somehow Chevalier just works for me. Maybe it's magic.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a photo of the main tapestry in the book:

"Falling Angels" by Tracy Chevalier

Eight months, eight book club meetings, eight books. We finally found one that we all liked! Everything about this one was great--the writing, the story, the characters (even the ones I didn't like very much).

I loved Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring (and, surprisingly, the movie was really good too). Renae started reading Falling Angels before I picked it up, and I was so excited when she said she got hooked really quickly. Although maybe I was just hearing what I wanted to hear, because what Renae had actually said was, "The beginning certainly grabbed my attention--shocking!!" But, you know, shocking can be good too. In books, anyway.

This is the story of two English families making their way into the freshly-hatched Edwardian era in London. At first, the only things the Coleman and Waterhouse families have in common are their adjacent plots in the cemetery (which is never named but was surely modeled after Highgate). Over time, the links between the two families grow more numerous and less tenuous, to the delight of certain family members and the chagrin of others.

About halfway through the story, women's suffrage became a strong theme (which was, oddly, dropped before the end of the book--I thought at least Chevalier might have included a little bit of history in an Afterword to wrap up that part of the plot . . . I guess she figured I ought to know already). Since you won't get it from the book, here's a refresher course for you: In 1918 (eight years after the end of Falling Angels) full voting rights were given to British women aged 30 and above; ten years later, this was extended to women aged 21 and up. This timeline is closely mirrored in the US, as American women were given the vote with the 19th amendment in 1920.

Anyway, I guess I can understand why Chevalier didn't emphasize suffrage more evenly throughout the book. Relating the history of the suffragettes really wasn't the purpose of the story; the cause was merely an outlet for Kitty Coleman's passion and zeal.

Do yourself a favor: if you haven't read anything by Tracy Chevalier yet, pick up something of hers soon. Yeah, I've only read two of her books, but they were two really REALLY good books. Surely that's not just a fluke.