Book Review: By Any Other Name

Here’s my book review for By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too. And check out today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult makes two bold claims. The first is that perhaps William Shakespeare did not author all the works he has been believed to have authored for centuries now. The second is that perhaps a woman named Emilia Bassano authored a good number of them instead, along with a small group of playwrights that would now be considered part of an elite literati. And after reading this novel, you just might be convinced that at least one, if not both, of those claims are true. (Be sure to read the Author’s Note section at the end of the book.) 

While the characters who were based on real people in the novel were compelling, what was most compelling to me were the questions surrounding writing and identity that this novel posits. Can words on a page still be meaningful and timeless if they aren’t attributed to an author, or their legitimate author? If so, in what way? Who truly ‘owns’ a work and what it does once it’s released into the world, and why would or does that matter? And, most importantly, how would our perceptions of Elizabethan plays and history change if Emilia Bassano, or a handful of women, were credited as being their authors? 

I urge all readers to keep an open mind as they read this novel, and to question their own deeply ingrained patriarchal-leaning intuitions regarding ‘great works’ and their supposed authors, as they become invested in Bassano’s and Green’s stories, which are highly engaging. Even if you don’t agree with the arguments being made regarding Shakespeare and his authorship, Bassano’s and Green’s personal stories are still compelling on their own. 

After reading this novel, you just might believe that it’s more absurd to assume that the women who were well educated in Elizabethan times did not write plays than to believe that they did. And that it’s more absurd to believe Shakespeare— a mediocre morally gray businessman who was obsessed with acquiring a coat of arms and making money (to the point that he hoarded wares in the middle of a famine), who offered no record of actually having been a writing collaborator of his contemporaries— did write all the works he is said to have written. 

Overall, I found this novel thorough and engaging. It piqued my interest and held it, and was fun to read. I was also entertained by each main character’s plight to write, as well as their developing romantic relationships. Picoult obviously did her homework when it came to Emilia Bassano and the Elizabethan era, but also took minor artistic liberties when needed (which she outlines in the Author’s Note section) to tell a deeply compelling story.

I would recommend this novel to writers who continually wonder if their work or voice matters, as well as fans of works by authors like Marie Benedict and Ariel Lawhon. And I would certainly recommend it to fans of works Shakespeare is currently credited with writing because there are many references to plays like Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet and Othello, et cetera, throughout the novel, making it fun to guess which work they came from as you read— luckily Picoult includes a Shakespearean References section at the end of the book, so you’ll know which ones you noticed too. 

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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

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Today’s Writing Prompt