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Shylock Is My Name

the Merchant of Venice Retold
FindingJane
Dec 17, 2015FindingJane rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book epitomizes struggle, so much so that there’s nary a peaceful chapter within it. The protagonists battle it out over various issues—the relationships between fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers and would-be spouses, Jew and Christian, antagonists over plots of land. The pages are filled with so much saber rattling you actually expect another war to break out. There is contention here that builds slowly and inexorably, like a Greek tragedy. In an era where everybody bends backwards in the name of political correctness, the amount of rampant bigotry in these pages is jaw-dropping in its bluntness. This reader wonders why someone doesn’t simply apologize before matters get so drastically out of hand only to realize that matters escalate so quickly and the simplest words are so easily misconstrued that apologies aren’t enough or swiftly become untenable. Acting as mediator (or mischief maker) is Shakespeare’s Shylock. His appearance is both mystical and oddly matter of fact. It’s as if you went shopping and found a post-marital Juliet fretting over what to fix her husband Romeo for dinner. How he appears out of the pages of his play is never explained but he brings to Strulovitch’s dilemma all the incisive intelligence and bitterness you would expect of his Shakespearean origin. The book thus inflates his character and gives it a depth and insight that Shakespeare didn’t have the space or inclination to manage. While the book occasionally gets bogged down in analytical and didactic conversation among its main protagonists, you can’t help but get dragged into the debate. Though not much bigger than most paperbacks, the book resists easy or swift reading. You must slow down and ponder as you move through these pages. Like the age-old Jew-Christian conflict, you are left with no clear solutions and an unsettled feeling, as though Shylock has somehow dogged your footsteps.