Totally Incomplete Recall

A conversation last night:

My mom: "You should ask Jennifer Lee Carrell if that thing with Don Quixote in Interred with Their Bones actually happened."

Me: <--No idea what she's talking about. "Don Quixote? You mean where that guy who was a playwright or distantly related to Shakespeare traveled to America to hide his manuscript?"

Mom: "The manuscript was in England. That one lady brought it and then it was stolen."

Me: "No, Rosalind brought the clue to England and that was stolen; but they still had to find the manuscript, which was in a cave in Arizona or something."

Between the two of us we should be able to piece together the plot of this book. Or so one would think.

Book Review: HAUNT ME STILL by Jennifer Lee Carrell

MacBeth: to this day, Shakespeare's most notorious tragedy. Legends of its malevolence haunt every production; scenes and lines from it are a familiar part of our culture--even to those who have never seen or read it. "Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble," is one of the most recognizable lines in English wordsmithing, be it in a play, novel, or film. But most people don't know about the mystery and mythology surrounding the work. Is "the Scottish Play" considered cursed for a very good reason? Former Ph.D. student and current director of Shakespearean plays, Kate Stanley, is about to find out in an ill-fated getaway to Dunsinnan Hill, the place where MacBeth met his fate.

This novel is the second in a series of Shakespearean mysteries, the first being Interred with Their Bones. I really enjoyed that book, and overall I liked this one even more. It has the same Da-Vinci-Code-for-Literature-Buffs sensibility, and feels like a faster read. You don't have to have read Interred to get what's going on Haunt Me Still, but it will probably help.

Kate is invited to Dunsinnan Hill by Lady Nairn, formerly an actress famous for playing the role of Lady MacBeth, to direct the so-called Scottish Play. This being a mystery and all, things quickly start to go downhill, people die, an annoying teenager is kidnapped, and Kate has to travel hither and thither to find Shakespeare's original version of MacBeth before the kidnappers do.

This novel is full of magic, history, and cool discoveries. The part with John Dee's obsidian mirror being Aztec blew my mind. I learned so much about MacBeth from this book, and it really made look at the play in a new light. It's not just about the history of the play; it's about the incredible power art can have over life. MacBeth is scary not because of the witches or spells or evil plots, but because it doesn't stay put on the stage and then quietly folds back into storage once the production is over--it bites back. Or so theater legend would have one believe. Even outside of legend, it appears that the play was edited down significantly due to its commentary on contemporary politics, something Haunt Me Still also discusses, mainly through historical flashbacks.

As much as I enjoyed the history in this novel, the book isn't perfect. It does drag significantly in the middle, mainly because it feels like it's being set up as a country manor mystery (I'm a total sucker for those, by the way); but then Kate leaves the manor to go chasing after the manuscript and the story loses a lot of momentum as it switches gears. Also, the whole thing with Kate's former luhvahr Ben was just ridiculous, especially the ending. I'm so over him.

ANYway. Even when the pages weren't turning quite so quickly, I was thoroughly enjoying this escapist mystery. I'm not as completely in love with Shakespeare as I was at the end of Interred with Their Bones, but I am utterly fascinated by Scotland and John Dee! If you're the type who enjoys academic mysteries, then I would most definitely recommend this.

Fun video of the day: Blackadder encounters the curse of the Scottish Play:

Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell

This book could easily be called The Shakespeare Code--it has all the mystery, puzzles, treasure, and travel of The Da Vinci Code, but with more solid research backing it up.

Kate Stanley has her dream job, directing Hamlet at the Globe in London.  A former Ph.D. student studying Shakespeare, Kate burned a lot of bridges when she quit Harvard, and she swore to never look back.  But now her former mentor, Professor Rosalind Howard, appears with a box she claims holds the secret to something big, and she wants Kate to help her uncover it. Although highly doubtful, Kate agrees to keep the box and think about it--but before she can give the professor her answer, the Globe has burned, and one person is dead: predictably, Rosalind Howard.  Kate quickly becomes convinced Roz was murdered, and the same person is now chasing her in pursuit of the box.  With the help of famed Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Lee, a mysterious man named Ben who claims to be Roz's nephew, and a wealthy eccentric who lives in a town called Shakespeare, Kate travels across England and the US in search of answers, and finding mainly more questions.

Phew!  As you can probably tell from my summary, this is a complex book, but it doesn't feel that way while you're reading it.  An academic mystery about Shakespeare might sound staid and doddering, but believe me, it isn't.  It starts off with a bang and, even though it is a long book, goes by very quickly.  The characters are interesting, the facts about Shakespeare are surprising, the mystery is fascinating, and it's chock-full of fun and smart references to Shakespeare and his plays.

That being said, there were some major plot holes--shouldn't Kate need an ID to fly, for example?  I figured out who the evol villains were before page one hundred, and the story seemed to lose a lot of its focus when the issue of Shakespeare-might-not-be-Shakespeare-but-all-these-other-rich-famous-people-take-your-pick popped up.  Sir Henry called that idea ridiculous, and I have to admit I agree with him.  When the book became more about that than anything else, I got a little bored with the whole thing.

Even with its problems, though, this novel is a lot better than similar novels I've read.  I loved the main characters, especially Kate, who is believably intelligent and stubborn enough to follow through on investigating the mystery (I also have to confess that I connected with her immediately because she wrote her dissertation on occult Shakespeare--I wrote my MA thesis on hermeticism in Giorgio di Chirico's work).  I loved the places Kate went to in her search for Shakespeare, and how obsessive and excited people still get over his plays.  My absolute favorite part of the novel, though, were the historical scenes from Shakespeare's own time--they were very few and far between, but they were the most emotionally engaging and striking part of the book.  I am definitely a hundred times more interested in Shakespeare now than I was a week ago!

I highly recommend this novel, especially if you're a fan of academic mysteries.  It picks you up immediately and doesn't loosen its grip on you for a long time.  And, unlike a few other academic mysteries I've read, in this one you do feel like the conclusion to the mystery is important and will matter, even to people who don't live to study the subject.

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