The Sonnet Lover

This baroquely plotted drama is almost likable in spite of itself. The titular Sonnet Lover is either the narrator, Renaissance sonnet professor Rose Asher, or Shakespeare's Dark Lady, whom Asher comes to believe was a Tuscan stone mason's uneducated teenaged daughter, who briefly visited England and slept with Shakespeare and thereafter wrote him deathless sonnets in flawless, mostly modern, English. If you question the likelihood of that, you may also doubt that Professor Asher, given her education and experience, should ceaselessly employ such sloppy diction as "ornje" for "orange" and "ahso" for "also" and be unable to pronounce "Lombardy" or "Fiesole." Nor are Jen Taylor's acting skills broad. Mostly she indicates drama by squeaking, which is monotonous. Her British and Aussie accents are quite good though. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

February 12, 2007
Goodman (The Ghost Orchid
) turns to Shakespeare for the plot of her fifth novel, with mixed results. Rose Asher, Hudson College Renaissance poetry professor, returns to La Civetta, the Italian estate-turned-academic retreat where, as a college student 20 years earlier, she had the romance of her life with married professor Bruno Brunelli. He's still there, but this time Rose has come as an adviser on a film inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets and the mysterious "Dark Lady" therein. The script, which includes an unattributed Shakespeare-like sonnet (taken from a manuscript found at La Civetta), is by one of Rose's star pupils, Robin Weiss, who soon dies in a possibly suicidal accident. The manuscript has vanished, but the sonnet seems to suggest that Ginevra de Laura, the 16th-century daughter of a master mosaic artist who worked at the estate, may be its author—and Shakespear's Dark Lady. Multiple plots and subplots revolve around the manuscript's recovery, Robin's death, the film, Rose's clandestine relationship with college president Mark Abrams, Bruno's presence and worries that Bruno's son, Orlando, may be a murderer. Goodman makes a plausible fictional case for Ginevra's crossing paths with Shakespeare and ably recreates the present and past Italian countryside. Nevertheless, dizzying crisscrosses, love triangles and rampant political machinations surrounding La Civetta's ownership obscure an intriguing solution to the lingering Dark Lady mystery.