By Any Other Name

Jodi Picoult is an auto-read author for me. Sometimes her books hit me hard in the very best way (Mad Honey, Small Great Things, The Storyteller) and others miss the mark a bit (My Sister's Keeper, House Rules).

Sadly, By Any Other Name is in the latter group for me. This is wholeheartedly a 'it's me, not you' issue. Initially, I LOVED the premise and the start of the story where we explore how women have been left out of history. I was thoroughly intrigued by this aspect but then .... we get into a lot of Shakespeare. The sonnets, the plays and the poetry - so not my cuppa tea. Sure, I expected it, but I enjoyed it about as much as I did in high school English class. The Bard (can we still call him that, the traitorous, plagiaristic git?) and I have never been friends. 

Set in dual timelines featuring playwrights in both eras - Emilia in the 16th century and Melina in the present century who is an ancestor of Emilia. Emilia goes to great lengths to make a living as a playwright and centuries later, Melina also struggles to get her play - which is about how Emilia wrote many of Shakespeare's most famous plays - on the New York stage. 

I will happily add this gorgeous book to my Picoult book collection on my shelves and I give the highest praise to Picoult who has obviously done a tonne of research for this book which is over 500 pages in length. While it felt overly long for my tastes and isn't one of my favourite books of hers, I appreciate how Picoult raises the issue of women's continuing struggle in male-dominated fields. The themes will stay with me for a long time, and I will continue to wonder how many other women were written out of history simply for their gender and the lack of power and agency given to women.

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Author: Jodi Picoult

Genre: Historical Fiction

Type and Source: Hardcover, personal copy

Publisher: Ballantine Books

First Published: August 20, 2024

Read: January 1 - 13, 2025

Book Description from GoodReads: From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Honey comes an “inspiring” (Elle) novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name.

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.