Years ago, for a course in grad school, I read Christopher Marlowe's play A JEW OF MALTA (c. 1590), and I remember wondering what sort of mind would conjure a play so full of brutality, revenge, poison, and betrayal. Marlowe's play DR FAUSTUS is a heartbreaker, too. I'm a sucker for anything British historical, so when I saw the brief synopsis of this novel about Marlowe on the Poisoned Pen website, I popped in for the zoom talk with the author and subsequently read the book.
I found this a solid debut and a very satisfying read. Yes, Epstein has taken some liberties with history (which she acknowledges in her author's note, and which unlike some reviewers I don't mind; I've used the same "get out of history free card" myself) but she's captured beautifully what might have been the brain and heart that would write those tragic plays. Her Marlowe is psychologically coherent, full of longing and pain and conflicting passions--a desire to do something of significance on the world/on the stage and a wish to do what he likes, behind the scenes, without repercussions. The story of how Marlowe is drawn into spying on behalf of Queen Elizabeth while simultaneously writing his plays and falling in love is suspenseful and moves at a quick pace. The writing is modern (Epstein doesn't attempt to reproduce Elizabethan English, thank goodness) and well wrought, with finely tuned dialog and some lovely poetic bits. The spymaster Walsingham: "You are Christopher Marlowe. ... Skilled in rhetoric and disputation, disgraceful in geography and geometry. You've been smoking all evening and hoped I wouldn't notice." Marlowe, in a stick spot: "He took a deep breath, then let it out. Two seconds, to stitch together some semblance of calm." A pleasure to read.
People who liked Hilary Mantel's books will find much to like here, although frankly I found this novel to be more accessible than Mantel's. The fact that Epstein is a Northwestern grad ... well, I'm sending this book along to my daughter who is also a Cat. :)
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