Blurb
Was the greatest ever love story a lie? The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love.
Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo’s attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and charming stranger offers her the chance of a different life. Soon though, Rosaline begins to doubt all that Romeo has told her.
She breaks off the match, only for Romeo’s gaze to turn towards her cousin, thirteen-year-old Juliet. Gradually Rosaline realises that it is not only Juliet’s reputation at stake, but her life.
With only hours remaining before she will be banished behind the nunnery walls, will Rosaline save Juliet from her Romeo? Or can this story only ever end one way?
A subversive, powerful untelling of Shakespeare’s best-known tale, narrated by a fierce, forgotten voice: this is Rosaline’s story.
Review
I won a copy of this book in a giveaway run by the lovely Emma’s Bibliotreasures – huge thanks for my prize! Like all my reviews at the moment, I read it a while ago, but am catching up with sharing my thoughts now.
I was a massive fan of Natasha Solomons’ last novel, I, Mona Lisa, and the premise of Fair Rosaline sounded just as intriguing, so I couldn’t wait to dive in. I was not disappointed! Described as an ‘untelling’ rather than a retelling, this novel takes the familiar and makes it new, flips the classic romance tropes of a story we know so well, and produces something fresh, profound, and, perhaps surprisingly, a whole lot of fun.
The writing is so skillful – the characters sound authentic without being overdone or pretentious; it is redolent with the Bard’s beautiful prose and witty asides, but doesn’t tip into parody. Scenes and lines from the play are incorporated – and often subverted – and there is a lot of literary fun to be had as a Shakespeare geek in spotting the references and the changes. But it stands on its own, too, as a damn good story, and what I really loved was characters I knew a little from the play became fully rounded individuals – Tybalt in particular is a wonderful character, as is Rosaline herself.
There is an apt and absorbing sense of the theatrical, befitting of its source material, yet Fair Rosaline also uses a novel’s capacity to widen out the scene and go ‘beyond the script.’ The setting is so vividly described – as we move from city to countryside, all the details of the heat and the smells and the food and the houses add a kind of thickening powder to the stew, and it feels rich and rounded and real.
The ending is deeply satisfying, too, but I’ll stop here before I give too much away. There is so much to enjoy in this novel – I can’t recommend it enough. You’ll never think of Romeo the same way again!
Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons is published by Manilla Press and is available to buy here.
Elspells 