Darlene S. (dbs) reviewed on 5/23/2006 + 329 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 5

In Smith's (A Citizen of the Country) compelling mystery/love story about a self-professed "hick from Vermont," window installer/Shakespeare scholar Joe Roper discovers evidence in a university archive that might refute the Bard's authorship of his hallowed canon. If Joe announces his find, it could make his career as a literary scholar-but it would also mean betraying his beloved mentor, Roland Goscimer, who's on the cusp of publishing part two of his long-awaited Shakespeare biography. Posy Gould, a flashy, aggressive Harvard student, who believes the Earl of Oxford is the author of the canon, jets with Joe to England to resolve the matter by sleuthing through libraries, graveyards, castles and stately homes-and, vicariously, through the glitter and duplicity of the Elizabethan stage and court. Smith, a Harvard Ph.D., knows academia can be as hazardous as cocktails with the Borgias and renders that world well, while making the Shakespeare authorship controversy as riveting as any film noir plot bursting with bodies. She's also a sharp yet economical stylist who can capture a character in a couple of sentences: "The woman in the doorway looked like Princess Diana, if Princess Diana had lived until fifty and worked real hard on the bulimia.... Silvia was goggle-eyed, with an asphalt road of eyeliner on each lid." This is a complex book about attachment and ambition, the clash of class and culture, with its settings-Boston and Britain-vividly drawn. It's a worthy addition to Smith's already impressive output.

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