Month in Review: April 2025

What I read this month

• Glennkill by Leonie Swann
• The Open-Focus Brain by Les Fehmi
• Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea
• Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio
• Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery – Reread
• I, Julian by Claire Gilbert
• Lady Romeo by Tana Wojczuk

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Reading the Theatre returns (in a small way)

To listen or to read? That was the decision that confronted me when I pulled Judi Dench’s Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent off my TBR – deciding I needed to read at least one theatre-themed book this year, if not a whole month full. (Thank you to Chris of Calmgrove Books for inspiring me with his own Reading the Theatre reviews!)

Returning to my question, I thought the obvious answer was to listen, until I started on the audio version — and found out Judi Dench was not reading her part of the book, as her fading vision doesn’t allow for reading any more. Though the actress doing the job was very good, it just wasn’t the same. What really put me off, though, was that the other reader, Brendan O’Hea, sounded terrible – completely stiff and wooden. So I switched to reading the e-book. I also found reading better in this case because often I wanted to go over passages again, to understand the explanations and dissections of Shakespeare’s text, which flew by too quickly for me otherwise.

I did listen to an epilogue on the audio book, a recorded conversation between Dench and O’Hea that gives a flavor of how lively their interactions were in the original. If you, too, opt for reading, I highly recommend listening at least to this bit.

However you experience this book – and there are fans of the audio version – it’s a must-read for all who love Shakespeare and who want to deepen their understanding and enjoyment. O’Hea edited down over 100 hours of recorded discussions with Dench, covering all the Shakespearean parts she ever played, from Ophelia to Titania to Lady Macbeth to Mistress Quickly and many more. It offers priceless insights into the plays, the characters, Shakespeare’s language, performers, and performance history, and is educational, hilarious, and at times outrageous. O’Hea took out the profanity, but Dench’s inimitable, sometimes irascible personality shines through even on the printed page.

A number of Dench’s Shakespeare performances can be viewed on film; I decided to skip Lady Macbeth this year, along with the naked green Titania done in the 60s, which was a bit much, and watch a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Comedy of Errors as a musical, directed by Trevor Nunn. As a bonus, Dench’s husband Michael Williams is also in this one, though not playing her husband on stage. It was a joyous production, bringing the improbable plot to energetic life – with perfect enunciation. If you need your spirits lifted for a couple of hours, do watch it.

Another book I recommend

Uplifting in a completely different way was Claire Gilbert’s richly imagined, poetically written life of Julian of Norwich, of whom we know almost nothing aside from the mystical text she produced in the fourteenth century (the first book written in English by a woman).

It was an audacious task to take on, aiming to fill out the thoughts and deeds of a profoundly contemplative individual, but Gilbert pulls it off, creating a believable window into the medieval world in an idiom that reaches across the centuries to our modern minds. The homeliness and warmth that make Julian’s writing so beloved are elaborated to portray a character tested by suffering, who wrestles with the greatest spiritual questions and the smallest practical challenges in a way we can all relate to. Not least in Gilbert’s achievement is making the part of the story after Julian has become an anchoress – a hermit confined to a small building attached to a church – as compelling as the rest, or even more so.

I particularly appreciated the timeline at the end that clearly marked which characters and events were real and which imagined – I wish all historical fiction would include this information!

Currently reading

The next book I picked out at random from the TBR, oddly enough, turned out to have connections both to the theatre and to Norwich. Edith Holler by Edward Carey is a gothic tale that starts on the day of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. It’s narrated by the title character, a child who lives in Norwich’s Theatre Royal — which she can never leave, not only because of poor health but because she was cursed at birth by a disgruntled former actor. Will she ever escape, or at least solve the mystery of Norwich’s missing children?

I’ve already recommended my first book by Carey, Little, and I hope this one will be as enjoyable, though definitely quite macabre. A theatre is in a sense a hall of ghosts, a way to play out what haunts us. “You’re haunted with wherever you are. We all carry our ghosts with us one way or another,” as Carey said in an interview. I look forward to seeing how he brings this strange story to life.

On the blog

• Postcards from Switzerland: Verenaschlucht
• March Reading in Review

What’s on your shelf this month?

Linked at The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, and the Monthly Wrap-up Round-up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction