Synopses & Reviews
Review
Shakespeare’s Younger Sister is
lush with description and meticulously researched history. The
characters are sharply drawn, luminous and memorable. The story itself
is delightful, sensual, humorous at times, and evilly witty. Geoffrey
Craig has created an unforgettable tableau of Elizabethan England at its
worst and its best, and a young woman who is not afraid to embrace
whatever life throws at her. Highly recommended.
Sandy Raschke - Fiction Editor: Calliope
Geoffrey Craig’s Shakespeare’s Younger Sister, is a unique composite: part historical fiction, part fantasy and wholly original. Mr. Craig presents an unvarnished snapshot of Elizabethan England, warts and all. From the sewerage in the streets to the crowded markets to the squalor of plague riven 16th century
London, he captures it all in well-researched detail. Against such
harsh reality, he introduces Constance, Shakespeare’s imaginary younger
sister.
Mr.
Craig's fictional Constance, who is 18 when we meet her in 1592, is
both beautiful and intelligent. On the verge of womanhood, she has
received a letter from her brother, Will, a struggling but
self-impressed playwright, who needs her to join him in London to help
maintain his household. Knowing their father would never approve, she
sneaks off in the dead of night thus beginning a story of the
psychological and moral growth of a young character.
Constance
is a feminist. Constance is bisexual (not unlike William Shakespeare,
himself, whose sonnets are addressed to both a “Fair Youth” and a “Dark
Lady”). But more critically, it is Constance’s literary gifts and
feminine sensibilities that insinuate themselves into her brother’s work
as she demonstrates her talent as a writer and becomes his silent
partner. As the novel’s cover – an attractive young woman contemplating
Yorick’s skull from Hamlet – implies: the question at the core of Shakespeare’s Younger Sister is truly Constance’s own personal self-realization: “To be or not to be…?” Without question, this is a novel that demands suspension of disbelief. But if one is willing make that leap, Shakespeare’s Younger Sister is a rewarding read.
Garner Simmons - Author: Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage
A
work of fiction with an imaginative plot set in an authentic historical
context. Superimposed upon this are present-day ideas about the
intellectual and sexual emancipation of women. The result is a fun and
lively read that has an educational benefit in that the book contains
many interesting details about Shakespeare's life and times.
Ruth W. Craig - Dartmouth Emeritus Professor
Synopsis
When,
in the spring of 1592, fictional eighteen-year-old Constance
Shakespeare joins her brother, Will, in London, she is in for any number
of surprises. Expecting opportunities not available under her father’s
domination in Stratford, she finds life in London far more complicated
and challenging, yet exhilarating, than she could possibly have
imagined. She must learn to navigate a city teeming with a range of
characters from aristocrats to common folk, from the highly educated to
the illiterate, from the honest to the con artist, from the highly moral
to a would-be rapist. Most of all, she has to cope with her brilliant
but stubborn and, occasionally, narrow-minded brother. Along the way,
she finds love, sexual intimacy and friendship but also travels a path
that sets her at odds with the strict conventions of Elizabethan
society.