Suzanne

The cover art drew me in, but if I knew it was essentially a treatise on violence against women, I wouldn’t have opened to the first page. In this case, I’m glad I did. It theorized on violence and oppression in a way that elevated it beyond despair porn (and made me think), but it’s real hook was a collection of viscerally relatable female characters whose caustic existence made my own vulgarities feel like evidence of aliveness.

Gorgeous, engrossing, and thought-provoking. A fictional speculation on the connection between the real-life death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and his subsequent writing of Hamlet, which dramatized the relationship between a father and son in death. My only criticism is that the book’s idealization of Anne Hathaway felt overdone, but even that idealization was enjoyable if I let go and allowed myself to partake in the modern fantasy of the perfectly wise healer-witch-rebel woman.