By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult 

544 pages

Published August 2024 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary:

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.

My Thoughts: 

Until a little over six years ago I had never read one of Picoult's books. I have now read five of them. My previous reluctant had mostly to do with my reluctance to read books that dealt with the latest "hot" topic. And while the main theme of this book, feminism, is certainly a hot topic, it is also a theme that resonates through the centuries which is the very reason this book is written in dual timelines. 

I have a tough time with dual time lines. I understand why authors utilize a modern timeline to help readers see the importance of stories set in the past. In this case, Picoult uses the story set in the present to introduce ideas to the reader that there's another person who plays into the idea that William Shakespeare was not the author of the works attributed to him. In fact, at least one of the true authors of the works may well have been a woman. Emilia Bassano was a real person who lived in the time of Shakespeare. The fact of the matter is that Bassano had skills and life experiences that Shakespeare did not, skills and life experiences that would have allowed her to write about the Danish court or life in Italy. 

Inevitably for me, one story nearly always outshines the other. Generally that's the story set in the past and this book was no exception, as difficult as it was to read. While this is a work of fiction, Picoult has crafted it around the known details of Bassano's life and the realities of women of the time. Picoult's vision of Bassano's life is a tough read. She is sold into becoming a courtesan at age 13. When she becomes pregnant, she is sold to a man who will horribly abuse her for decades and drink away everything they have, she will never be able to be with the man she truly loves, and her writing will only find an audience through a man who underpays her for her work. 

I felt like both story lines could have been pared down considerably.  Melina's story got pulled in too many directions - a love story, a storyline involving her father, a misunderstanding that puts her into an impossible (but also unbelievable) situation, and a detour where Melina is the bad guy in a diversity battle.  Emilia's story sometimes felt a little repetitive and that Picoult had too many terrible things happen to her. 

But Emilia's story is well worth the read as is Melina's fight to bring Emilia's story to life. I highly recommend reading the Author's Notes and the References to Shakespeare at the back of the book, which I found terrifically interesting and gave me a greater appreciation for the ways that Picoult had managed to work into the story the works attributed to Shakespeare.