nat_sanchez 's review for:

Enter the Body by Joy McCullough

5.0

adventurous emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

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This book/play centers on the tragic stories of 4 of Shakespeare’s female characters. Mccullough’s story-telling is super inventive, engaging, and fast-paced as the girls/women argue and bond in a theater trap room after dying in each of their plays. As they deconstruct what has happened to them and realize their lives and deaths were constructed to be props for men, they each take a turn controlling and re-telling their own story. Lots of great quotes, but this might be my favorite, as Cordelia reflects on how she will not “perform” her love for her father — a man, like most men, who she realizes is not capable of loving her but is only capable using her love to benefit himself while congratulating himself on having “earned” the love and devotion of his daughters — “You haven’t seen me,

Have no idea who I am,…

I won’t dance for you.

I won’t contort my true devotion into a playing piece upon your board. I love you. I love you more than you deserve (for that’s not why we love). 

But I won’t rip my heart out for you to devour, leaving nothing for myself.” Side note - I never read King Lear, and this book makes me want to.