A question of Will [Paperback]

Only the most dogmatic partisans of the by-now moribund official view of Shakespeare will be offended this linguistically precocious reconstruction of the "might have been" hypothesis of the Earl of Oxford's identity as the real Bard. Indeed Lynne Kositsky has an uncanny knack for anchoring her fictional narrative in detailed and singularly accurate memory for cultural nuance and historical incident. Kositsky also possesses a natural gift for the pulse of language. Her narrator speaks in an energetic and often captivating fusion of Canadian Valley Girl slang and Elizabethen vernacular, which is certain to capture the imagination of many young readers. Is this another J.K. Rowling in the making?

Here's a taste:

Bobby Goffe really hated me, that was for sure: he criticized and cuffed me every chance he got. Shakspere dissed me daily, perchance cos he'd been stuck with me, mayhap cos he feared I'd discovered his secret schemes. And I still needed to keep a sharp look out for that other gig, Beavis, Butthead, and Mystery Guy, at every turn. To cut a long story short, I felt threatened every step I took. At the house, at the Theatre, on the street, a mere whisper would twist my head around, a hint of a hubbub would set my heart to heaving.

(p. 70)

As the reader may detect, Ms. Kositsky's most formidable weapon, like that of her dark hero Edward Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is a razor sharp wit, viz. her biting satirical invocation of the (historically real)duel between actor Gabriel Spencer and actor-playwright Ben Jonson, in which Willow, transporting mysterious packages between Vere and Shakspere, is revealed to be the precipitating cause of the duel:

Galloping gobstoppers, what should I do now? Stand my ground till [Spenser] strangled me, or agree to what he wanted, and then get out while the going was good. I was too scared to make up my mind. He started shaking me again like I was a pair of maracas. And maybe there were two of me at that, cos I was starting to see everything double.

"No, never," I cried at last. "I will never give you anything of Vere's. Do your worst!" I drooped over like a limp lily, and was about to throw up on the villain's boots, really making him mad, when Ben Jonson rushed into the Cathedral. He must have been behind us all the time. In a trice, he realized the mess I was in and shoved his bully-boy face into Spencer's, fixing him with his beery breath. "That's Shakspere's lad, Gabe. Put him down right now, right here, right this minute, before you do him a permanent disablement"......

(p. 102)

The book can be recommended without reserve for all readers between the ages of eight and eighty who love the derring-do world which belongs to "Shakespeare" -- the world which harbored the great voyages of exploration which have made our modern life, for better or worse, what it now is. The author deserves congratulation if not some sort of medal; but one may be sure the further books by Ms. Kositsky are not far from publication.