Ophelia - by Lisa Klein

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The Lowdown

Experience Hamlet in a completely new way by reading Lisa Klein's Ophelia.  Whether you know and love the Shakespeare play or not, this book is sure to please.  Beginning when Ophelia is just a young  girl, Klein shows us what it was like to grow up at court in Denmark's Elsinore.  Ophelia leaves her father and brother to tend and wait on Queen Gertrude.  While at court, she catches the eye and heart of the young, handsome, dark-haired Prince Hamlet.  They meet in secret and swear their love.  Can this love between them stay strong and keep them grounded, though, as Denmark rots all around them?  When Hamlet learns of his father's death and sees a ghost, he begins to focus on his own mind and not Ophelia.  We all think we know Ophelia.  She went made because her father died.  But that might not be the case...Read to hear this classic story finally from Ophelia's point of view. 

What I Liked

This is a real love story but it's not too overly romantic.  I loved watching the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia develop and grow.  In the play, you don't get to focus on Ophelia too much because the character of Hamlet always takes center stage.  Here, though, the relationship blossoms before your eyes and you understand what these two characters were like together.  Ophelia is a smart girl, but she deals with many love issues just like kids today.  One night while reading with the Queen, the Queen tells Ophelia,

I think that she must be cruel if she wants to be loved....for once a lady succumbs to the man's desire, he rejects her as unworthy of it.

 Ophelia, hearing this, worries about the love she has shown her Prince.  She questions herself,

Because I showed my love to Hamlet, would his ardor diminish?  Was love like a hunger, easily satisfied by feeding?  Or did it grow by what it fed on?  Should I have withheld my kisses and thus increased his appetite for them?

 This book did a great job just showing what all the characters were going through.  Klein's story is believable and exciting.  I do know a lot about the play, so I also loved seeing lines in the book that I recognized from the play.

Read This If...

You want to hear what Ophelia has to say...finally!

You like classic love stories.

You like historical fiction.

You like making connections to the stuff you read (or have read) in English class!

You want to read a story about a kick-butt girl.

Grade:  A-

The Luxe by Anna Godberson

So, honestly, as a grown-up, I felt a little guilty for picking up The Luxe at the bookstore, but I really loved that dress on the cover!  I was hoping for some turn of the century, gossip-girl-like drama, and that is exactly what I got with this book.

The Luxe takes place in 1899 in Manhattan, and it was really fun to be taken back to the times when people "called" upon one another and attended fabulous parties.   Not that people don't attend parties now, but back then the parties were different.

The main characters are Elizabeth and Diana Holland, two New York sisters who are very much at the center of the social scene in Manhattan.  Elizabeth has been away in Europe, and her return starts the action of the story.  She and her sister have to appear to have lots of money, when the  truth is that  they have none.  Their father died and since then their mother has had to pay off his large debts, leaving the girls with nothing but their reputations....kind of reminds me of Rose and her mother in the movie Titanic.  With this knowledge weighing on her, Elizabeth has to play her part well and try to find a good match.  The wonderful and rich Henry Schoonmaker is single and a great catch that girls would die for. The only problem is that she sort of loves someone else...

Of course there must be a bad girl to add to this mix, and that's where Elizabeth's friend Penelope comes in.  Penelope is the wild girl (reminds me of Blair on Gossip Girl) and she always makes sure things are stirred up.

So against this backdrop, the girls, the guys, and the parents all try to match each other up.

I like the writing style of this book.  It was easy to read, but unique, too, because Godberson starts each chapter off with a little "real life snippet" of something:  a letter, a newspaper article, a line from the gossip column of the paper...and then the chapter starts from there.  Each chapter is focused on one of the girls, too, so you get to see things from each girls point of view.

I really enjoyed the book.  I did sort of figure out how things would unfold before they did, but it was ok, and still a fun book to read.  I did get the sequel, Rumors, and plan to read it soon.  All in all a fun book with old school girl drama, which, really, isn't that different from the girl drama of today.  I recommend this book to readers who are interested in drama, relationships, and love.

Grade:  B

The Dead Fathers Club - by Matt Haig

I love Shakespeare and am always interested to read new versions and reimaginings of Shakespeare's classic stories.  The Dead Father's Club is a modern day Hamlet and it was pretty good.  

The main character is a young boy named Philip Noble.  Philip's dad was killed in a single car accident.  Losing a parent is bad enough, but after his father's funeral, Philip is visited by his father's ghost.  Philip's father tells him that he was murdered by Philip's Uncle Alan, and that Philip must murder Alan in order for his father's ghost to move on and escape "the terrors."  The Dead Fathers Club is the story of what Philip decides to do about his Uncle.

One feature of this book that makes it different is the narration.  The book is narrated from Philip's point of view and has no punctuation except for periods at the ends of sentences.  The voice reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time.  

I enjoyed this version of the Hamlet story, but at times, I lost interest.  I didn't get overly angry with characters or emotionally moved to feel for them much, even Philip, who is the main victim in the story.  The way he contemplates what he has to do is very different than the real Hamlet (who is in his twenties).  I just didn't get into this book that much.  I would recommend it to people who know the Hamlet story and who want to read a new version of the tale.  If you liked Curious Incident, you might also like the voice in this book.

Grade:  C