Review: The Bookman&rsquo;s Tale, by Charlie Lovett

Title:&nbsp;The Bookman&rsquo;s TaleAuthor:&nbsp;Charlie LovettYear of Publication:&nbsp;2013Length:&nbsp;352 pagesGenre:&nbsp;historical mysteryNew or Re-Read?&nbsp;NewRating:&nbsp;4.25 stars
The Bookman&rsquo;s Tale&nbsp;is the story of Peter, an antiquarian bookseller who, in the midst of grieving for his recently-departed wife, finds what appears to be a Victorian-era watercolor of her, pressed inside an old copy of Edmond Malone&rsquo;s&nbsp;An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers&nbsp;(the book exposing William Henry Ireland&rsquo;s forgeries of Shakespearean manuscripts). Though he knows the painting can&rsquo;t possibly be of his wife, he feels compelled to find out the identity of both painter and subject. Hunting down this information leads him to stumble across an early edition of Robert Greene&rsquo;s&nbsp;Pandosto, the source material for&nbsp;The Winter&rsquo;s Tale.&nbsp;While this would be an extraordinary find on its own, what makes this particular book even more astonishing is the marginalia: a series of notes apparently written by Shakespeare as he composed his play. Peter thinks that he may have realized his life-long dream to find evidence proving once and for all that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him, but he knows enough of the history of forgeries to be wary of deception, and so he sets out on a quest to determine the book&rsquo;s authenticity. He&rsquo;s not the only one on the trail, however, and people with a lot to lose if&nbsp;Pandosto&nbsp;proves authentic&nbsp;are willing to kill to preserve its secrets.
[&amp;#8230;] I received this book from the publisher, in exchange for a review, and I will freely admit that I had a lot of reservations &mdash; and I will just as freely admit that they were all, thankfully, rendered irrelevant. I worried this would be yet another&nbsp;Da Vinci Code&nbsp;knockoff, and while I have nothing against that genre of book in general, the quality can be alarmingly varied. I worried it would have an anti-Stratfordian bent, because I have learned to be leery when I see phrases like &ldquo;prove the truth about Shakespeare&rsquo;s identity&rdquo; on book jackets (as turned out to be the problem with&nbsp;Interred with Their Bones). I worried that the dead-wife angle would make it too maudlin, too Gothic for my personal tastes (as was my trouble with the well-written but not-to-my-preference&nbsp;The Thirteenth Tale). I&rsquo;m very happy to say that, as it turns out, I had nothing to fear on all three counts.
The biggest problem, I think, is that the summary really doesn&rsquo;t do the book justice. For one thing, it makes it sound like the book is a lot more about the painting and the Victorian angle, when the far greater focus is on textual transmission and the development of the Shakespeare brand through the centuries. It&rsquo;s also not nearly as mournful in tone as the jacket makes it out to be, nor is the vaguely paranormal element the jacket hints at as prevalent. Peter is a strong protagonist without needing to be an action hero, and I appreciate him for that. He is, definitely, a scholar and a bookseller, and at no point during the story does he morph into a super-spy or an Indiana Jones. He remains what he is, using his intelligence, his inquisitive nature, and his training in the field of early modern publishing to hunt down the mystery. I also appreciated that Lovett could give us an introverted protagonist with social anxiety problems and still have him be a strong character. Peter struggles a lot, both early in the 1980s storyline and in the 1995 storyline, with social interaction, but the reader gets to see him learn how to deal with that. He finds his safe spaces and safe people. Unfortunately, since Amanda was the one who drew him out to begin with, after her death, he retreats from the world and isolates himself entirely &mdash; so a lot of the story isn&rsquo;t just his quest to find the truth behind&nbsp;Pandosto, it&rsquo;s about him finding closure with her death and learning to be that more-adjusted version of himself again, even without her. It&rsquo;s a deeper and more emotionally satisfying angle than I was expecting the book to have, and it strengthens the narrative.
[&amp;#8230;]&nbsp;I can cheerfully recommend&nbsp;The Bookman&rsquo;s Tale&nbsp;as a great summer read for any Shakespeare enthusiast, but particularly, I think, for the sort who has a real interest in the early modern world of playmaking and printing. There&rsquo;s more substance here than to your typical novel of this sort, and a lot more &ldquo;Easter eggs&rdquo; slipped in for the benefit of readers-in-the-know.&nbsp;

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