Ghostly Father

The Ghostly Father is the fourth William Shakespeare retelling I have read in the past few years. I love the idea of giving his iconic plays a new lease of life through the novelised form although I have had a bit of a hit and miss experience with the ones I had previously read. For this interpretation of the tragic Romeo and Juliet romance Sue Barnard chose to use the point of view of one of the supporting characters, Friar Lawrence (here named in Italian as Fra. Lorenzo), to tell her tale. I liked that he was therefore slightly removed so we could get a wider perspective and, being a friar, it made sense for so many people to trust the one man with their secrets.

Barnard's deviation from the Shakespeare original is cleverly plotted. I was impressed with how her new direction seemed to flow seamlessly from the traditional tale. It felt as though we had taken a step back in order to see the full picture whereas previously we had only been given a narrow view! The story keeps up a pretty rapid pace throughout so is an intriguing and exciting read. I would have preferred a much stronger sense of its historical setting and got annoyed with frequent historic and geographic inaccuracies which snapped me out of the atmosphere. Also, Fra. Lorenzo has an infuriating habit of mansplaining things that the characters to which he is speaking would already have known! As a historical fiction novel, I was initially disappointed with The Ghostly Father, but when I could reimagine it into a sort of any-time fairytale period, I very much enjoyed the actual story.