“I won’t/ be used/ without consent./ You think me/ easy to ignore./ Perhaps I am./ But only notice me/ when you have use/ and I will scream/ so loud I’ll wake the dead,/ and they might have/ some words for you” (McCullough).
Cordelia, Ophelia, and Juliet gather beneath the trapdoor of the stage to retell their stories to the other women of Shakespeare’s plays who haunt the corners. All the while they ignore another teenage girl, Lavinia, horrifically maimed who silently takes their stories in.
Tell me there’s a book about Shakespeare’s dead teenage characters ruminating and critiquing their deaths beneath a theatre and I’m sold, no one had to say anything more to convince me to read Enter the Body. And this was probably a good thing because going into this book I didn’t know just how much verse was going to be in here, and if I had I probably would have avoided it. I’m not a big fan of verse books, I think many stories can be told well in this way but from my experience I’ve been unimpressed. That being said, I really enjoyed McCullough’s poetry here. Each of the three protagonists has a unique voice and McCullough uses different poetic techniques for each which highlighted their individuality. Surprisingly, I wasn’t a fan when Cordelia, Ophelia, and Juliet spoke together. McCullough chose to write those scenes as a script which I thought was creative, but their voices together sounded completely different from their individual voices. They sounded more like modern teens, which was probably the point, but jarring to move from poetic voice to modern teen (no cap).
Ophelia was my favourite, naturally. I think McCullough gave such a silent character the perfect voice and I loved reading how she envisioned her story going. I also really enjoyed Juliet’s verses, they were the most unique and I loved her voice. Cordelia’s was very different than I was expecting, told in the traditional iambic pentameter but the portrayal of her was not what I thought it was, but I liked it. I would have liked more from Lavinia. I understood what McCullough was doing with her, it was literally spelled out near the ending, but through the magic of theatre and literature I would have liked something more from her than silent observer. I would have also liked if some of Shakespeare’s other characters had been given a moment to shine, but I understand that since it was marketed as YA that the teens were given their time in the spotlight.
McCullough does an excellent job giving each character agency over telling their stories as written by the Bard as well as reclaiming and retelling their stories the ways they wish they’d gone. Not all the endings are happy, some are more realistic, but all of them are their endings, the endings they have written and are telling the audience. It’s the strongest part of the book and after reading it I thought about how well this book would work as a play. I hope McCullough considers turning it into a script at some point, so much of it is already formatted and reads as such. I think teen performers would especially enjoy this!
Enter the Body is a must-read for any Shakespeare fan who wishes his dead women had another chance to speak. For the theatre lovers, this is a book you don’t want to miss!
Publication: March 14th 2023
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Pages: 336 pages (eBook)
Source: Libby
Genre: Fiction, Young Adult, Verse,
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
In the room beneath a stage’s trapdoor, Shakespeare’s dead teenage girls compare their experiences and retell the stories of their lives, their loves, and their fates in their own words. Bestselling author Joy McCullough offers a brilliant testament to how young women can support each other and reclaim their stories in the aftermath of trauma.
Sarah O'Connor 