O, Juliet - Robin Maxwell

★★★★★★★★★★ (8/10)

If Shakespeare needed an update, it was found in O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell. She took Romeo and Juliet and brought it to a new generation. Not only does it follow the play’s outline, O, Juliet fills in the gaps of what happened behind the scenes, as well as adds some humanity to Shakespeare’s characters. His Juliet was beautiful and loving, but Maxwell gives us a clue as to how she really felt about her life and some insights into the culture of the time.

It didn’t hit me until about halfway through the novel that the setting was wrong. The original play takes place in Verona, but Maxwell decides to place her novel in Florence. Her decision makes a lot of sense after I thought about it. She introduces the Medici, who would have no place in Verona, and they are essential to her plot. Juliet’s best friend is about to become a Medici, and the Medici family are key to the peace between the warring families. Florence is also appropriate because it was the center of the Italian Renaissance, which explains Juliet’s education and views on life. I especially love the details that Maxwell includes about daily life, the status of women, and the secret nightlife of the city. She is very even about it: she tells about the wealthy as well as the poor. Well, somewhat. I’m sure that the depiction of Viola and Massimo is exaggerated to make their lives seem happy and easy.
Maxwell also does an excellent job of giving you both sides of the story. She tells more of Juliet’s side, but Romeo gets his say. Shakespeare’s is very much told from the position of an outsider who heard everything and wrote a play about it. In O, Juliet, Romeo and Juliet tell their feelings as they happen. I could feel Juliet’s heart beating faster as Romeo came to her balcony. I could sense Romeo’s joy at being with his family again. I sympathized with the despair both felt at Juliet’s proposed marriage to her father’s business partner.

I knew a bit about what was expected of women from wealthy families, but Maxwell really brought to light the horrors that some women faced to help their families. One woman was practically forced to marry a man who treated her badly, and since she had to live with his family, she was ill-treated by her mother-in-law, and there was nothing she could do about her situation. Once a woman married, her family could not really help her. She was expected to have children and endure her treatment, and hope that things would get better with time. Juliet faced the same fate if she could not be with Romeo, and it would have been a much more heart-breaking tale if she had been subjected to a man like Jacopo Strozzi.

This novel was entirely enjoyable, but it was painful to read only because I knew the ending already. Romeo and Juliet had to die. That’s just the way it ends. It’s history. However, that did not keep me from holding out hope that somehow Maxwell would find a way to keep them alive and send them to live out their happily-ever-after in some faraway place. Every page turned brought me closer to the tragic ending that I knew was coming, but when it did come, it was strangely joyful and perfect. It wasn’t nearly as depressing as Shakespeare’s original, and that made me wonder if I was reading the novel wrong. Maybe I was putting in words that weren’t there, so I read the last few chapters again, and it came out to the same ending. And still, I didn’t cry like I do for Romeo and Juliet; I wasn’t upset; I didn’t toss the book away wishing it had ended differently. I liked it. I liked that they died because it was poetic, just as their romance had been.

O, Juliet will now have a special place on my bookshelf, and now I might want to reread Shakespeare’s play to see if I can find any shadow of the passion, emotion, and love that appeared in Maxwell’s novel. Again, I’m going to have to find more from this author.