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Summary
Summary
Tracy Chevalier brings Shakespeare's Othello --a harrowing drama of jealousy and revenge--to a 1970s era elementary school playground.
Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, diplomat's son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day--so he's lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can't stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players--teachers and pupils alike--will never be the same again.
The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970s suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Peeking over the shoulders of four 11 year olds--Osei, Dee, Ian, and his reluctant "girlfriend" Mimi--Tracy Chevalier's powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying, and betrayal will leave you reeling.
Author Notes
Tracy Chevalier was born on October 19, 1962 in Washington, D.C. After receiving a B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year-long M.A in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
She is the author of several novels including The Virgin Blue, Burning Bright, Remarkable Creatures, and The Last Runaway. Her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The latest in Hogarth's Shakespeare series finds Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring) relocating Othello to Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s, where sixth grader Osei, the son of a Ghanaian diplomat, faces his first morning at a new elementary school, his fourth in six years. The day starts well, as Osei meets popular girl Dee and the pair fall head over heels in love. But seeing the school's only black boy woo a white girl is too much for Ian, a schoolyard bully, and he hatches a plan to ruin their blossoming relationship. Ian drags others into his manipulations, and by the end of the school day, hearts are broken and tragedy strikes the normally placid schoolyard. Chevalier smartly uses her narrative as an opportunity to spin a story commenting on racism in America, and while she weaves Shakespeare's narrative arc into her novel by bouncing between characters' experiences, the final result is only moderately effective. By compressing everything into one morning and afternoon, Chevalier rushes some action, and while the reader may recognize how children tend to amplify emotions, moments are occasionally difficult to believe. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Superbly entrancing Chevalier (At the Edge of the Orchard, 2016) is the latest prominent writer to contribute to the scintillating Hogarth Shakespeare series of provocative contemporary retellings of the Bard's works, including Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed (2016). With breathtaking urgency, Chevalier brings Othello to a 1970s suburban elementary school outside Washington, D.C., where the playground is as rife with poisonous intrigue as any monarch's court. Into this rigidly hierarchical fiefdom steps the new boy, who is not only a stranger, but also the only black student. While children and adults alike gape at him with dismay and worse, Osei Kokote, a diplomat's son from Ghana, who has been through this before, methodically reviews his survival strategies. But pure love ignites at first sight between Osei and Dee, the golden girl, and their impulsive touch shoots a veritable lightning bolt through the school's collective psyche. Scheming bully Ian promptly instigates a chain reaction of lies, bribes, threats, betrayals, and assaults that leaves everyone scorched. Chevalier's brilliantly concentrated and galvanizing improvisation thoroughly exposes the malignancy and tragedy of racism, sexism, jealousy, and fear.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
DEVILS BARGAIN: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising, by Joshua Green. (Penguin, $17.) Green's deeply reported account explores Bannon's origin story and how he helped pull off a major political upset: the election of Donald J. Trump. Their partnership - and shared talents for whipping up spectacle and outrage - ushered in what Bannon saw as the culmination of a global populist uprising. RUNNING, by Cara Hoffman. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) It's 1988 in Athens, and a group of hustlers roam the city's underbelly. Bridley, who has left the United States behind, joins a British couple, Jasper and Milo, and is soon folded into their relationship. Our reviewer, Justin Torres, praised these "memorable antiheroes," calling them "tough and resourceful, scarred, feral and sexy." STALIN AND THE SCIENTISTS: A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905-1953, by Simon Ings. (Grove, $19.) For the founders of the Soviet Union, science was always a pillar of the state. But for scientists, the stakes were higher: If they published research the government did not endorse, they faced jail, exile or death. Ings offers a fascinating look at this establishment, which he calls "the glory and the laughingstock of the intellectual world." NEW BOY, by Tracy Chevalier. (Hogarth, $15.) In Chevalier's retelling of "Othello," part of Hogarth's series of novels revising Shakespeare plays, the events unfold over a single day on a Washington playground. When O, a sixth grader from Ghana, arrives at his new school in the 1970s, Dee, the most popular girl, is immediately drawn to him. As children and teachers alike weigh their unease with a black student in the school, a malicious classmate tries to torpedo the friendship - with a shocking conclusion. A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. (Vintage, $18.) The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, draws on diaries, letters and even quilts to understand how women reacted to their church's controversial embrace of polygamy. But even as Mormon women strained under domestic responsibility, they were able to become political actors. 4 3 2 l, by Paul Auster. (Picador, $18.) After Archie Ferguson, the novel's central character, is born, Auster offers up four distinct versions of his life, with characters and themes that recur across his different lives. Our reviewer, Tom Perrotta, called the story "a work of outsize ambition and remarkable craft, a monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes."
School Library Journal Review
Part of the "Hogarth Shakespeare" series, this reimagining of Othello is set in a suburb of 1970s Washington, DC. The son of a diplomat, Osei is used to change, and at his fourth school in six years, he is unsurprised to see that he is the only black student on the playground. The other kids are nonplussed, and in some cases unnerved, by the color of Osei's skin. Tasked with guiding the newcomer, Dee is drawn to Osei, finding him a compelling contrast to the other sixth grade boys. Over the course of one turbulent day, Osei and Dee come together and are torn apart by the politics of the school yard and the machinations of one troubled child. Readers familiar with the Bard's work will follow the narrative with a sense of dread. However, hope makes its way into the story, providing the possibility of a happy ending. Chevalier's writing is spare but enthralling. The characters are memorable, and the shifting perspectives make the misunderstandings, deliberate or otherwise, more painful. Osei especially is a standout, his initial openness to his new environment a deep contrast to the pained, defiant young man teetering at the top of the playground hierarchy as the book races to its conclusion. VERDICT While readers of Chevalier's historical fiction may be surprised with the more recent setting, her fans, as well as those who enjoy Shakespeare retellings, should be entranced by the way her prose sings, illuminating the darker sides of humanity.--Erinn Black Salge, -Morristown-Beard School, -Morristown, NJ © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Bullies, a betrayer and one romantic admirer ... Shakespeare is transplanted to a school in 1970s Washington DC in this reimagining of his tragedy This novel is part of a series of retellings of Shakespeare's work by writers including Margaret Atwood, Howard Jacobson, Jo Nesbo and Jeanette Winterson. The project pays tribute to the enduring relevance of the plays and the infinite possibilities of breathing new life into stories that were themselves reshaped from medieval tales, histories and the literature of the ancient world. New Boy is in the tradition of movies such as 10 Things I Hate About You or West Side Story, or Toni Morrison's play Desdemona, in which she rewrites Othello as a conversation in the afterlife between the murdered wife and her African nurse Barbary. Chevalier takes what is possibly the most emotionally charged of Shakespeare's plays and transplants it in time and place. The new boy of the title is Osei Kokote, the Ghanaian son of a diplomat, who joins the sixth grade late in the school year. This is Washington DC in the 1970s, a time when the partial armour of political correctness had yet to offer protection against blatant racism. Not only does Osei have to navigate new friendships and the brutal politics of the playground, he is also the only black child in the school. From the casual, unexamined bigotry and suspicion of the teachers and the outright hostility of some of his schoolmates, it's clear that "settling in" is not going to be easy. Chevalier's cast of 11-year-old middle schoolers includes the duplicitous Ian, the lovelorn and gullible Rod and the always underestimated Millie, as well as the disapproving authority figure, Mr Brabant. Osei is quickly befriended by golden-haired Dee, a sensitive, imaginative girl who is fascinated by the exotic newcomer -- she has eyes, and she chooses him. Chevalier writes her fascination well and there is also a deft examination of the accommodations a boy such as Osei must make wherever he goes. Even at this tender age, he is aware that his very being evokes fear, sometimes disgust. We are told that in his last school he had volunteered to be the goalie during football, conscious that it meant the other boys wouldn't then have to touch him. Chevalier is delicate in her description of the emotional and mental cost of all this careful avoidance: Osei surveys the playground with "the bullies, patrolling and dominating. And himself, the new boy, standing still in the midst of these well-worn grooves, playing his part too." Like Othello, New Boy is very much the story of the betrayer; Ian's playground machinations as he plots to use Rod's desire for Dee to break up the friendship between her and the new boy are a basic transplanting of Iago's deceptions in the original. Granted, there are some interesting innovations. Osei's elder sister, Sisi, who has shed her Africanness in favour of the more appealing radicalised identity of her African American friends, with their exhortations of black empowerment and pride, provides convincing political context. And the strained relationship between the siblings serves to emphasise the isolation and insecurity that lead to young Osei's ultimate downfall. But in the end, I found it difficult to believe that I was reading the true lives of 11-year-olds. Setting the action over a single day telescopes the drama in a way that is perhaps too concentrated for a novel; too often the language, in dialogue and in the rendering of the children's internal thoughts, takes on the distinct intonations of adult conversation. For example, early on Dee attempts to engage Osei in conversation, thinking to herself, "You may be a different colour ... but I know you." This may well be true, but it is hard to believe that an 11-year-old would articulate it in quite that way. The too faithful adherence to the original is what makes this novel less than successful for me. Shakespeare's audacious appropriation, or, if you like, reshaping of known stories to make them relevant to a new audience has given us the classics that still reso--nate today. It is not the detail of the plotting in his work that is important but the interrogation of human motivation, the exploration of the range of human emotion and experience. My wish, as I read Chevalier's ambitious novel, was for a more radical interpretation of Shakespeare's play. I wanted to believe absolutely in these characters without necessary reference to their originals. New Boy 's direct transfer of the play from stage to page does not allow for a full development of the characters who are summoned into being. - Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.
Kirkus Review
As her contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series of contemporary retellings of the Bard's works, Chevalier (At the Edge of the Orchard, 2016, etc.) turns Othello into the story of a disastrous chain of events that follows a black student's arrival at a white elementary school in suburban Washington, D.C.Knowing Othello is a tragedy, readers begin the novel with dread, aware that at least one of the sixth-grade protagonists gathering before classes begin will likely meet a tragic end. Among the girls, Dee is smart and popular, Mimi intuitive and thoughtful, Blanca what used to be called "fast." Blanca's boyfriend, Casper, is the most popular boy, but "calculating" Ian runs the playground. The children are shocked by the arrival of Osei, a Ghanaian diplomat's son and the first black child the all-white school has seen. Despite references to Soul Train and bell bottoms, the school's straight-laced, narrow-minded atmosphere feels more 1950s than post-Civil Rights-era 1970s. Dee and Casper are the two exceptions. Casper offers friendship while the romantic attraction between Dee and Osei is immediately palpableand goes over the top into ick-factor territory when Dee looks at Osei and "the fire leapt and spread through him." Meanwhile, Ian senses Osei will challenge his sway over his classmates, especially after Osei shows prowess during a kickball game. Lacking Osei's confusing charm, Ian comes across as a bully who controls through fear. He manipulates the other kids to create emotional mayhem that closely follows the original play's outline. The book's five divisions equate to the play's five acts, and the novel's primary pleasure lies in how Chevalier parallels Shakespeare's plot detailsfor instance, transforming Othello's handkerchief embroidered with strawberries into Osei's strawberry-embossed pencil box and having the kids play on a playground pirate ship. This follow-the-plot-dots modernization unfortunately falls flat due to Chevalier's heavy-handedness in turning Othello into a polemic on the evils of American racism and her awkward shoehorning of tween angst into Shakespearian tragedy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring) takes a surprising narrative path with the Bard in tow: her privileged fifth graders play out Othello in a suburban Washington, DC, elementary school in 1974. The star here is narrator Prentice Onayemi, whose melodious, wide-ranging, gender-adaptive narration steals the show. The eponymous "new boy" is Osei, a diplomat's son originally from Ghana, who enters his fourth new school in six years. He, too, is "a diplomat of sorts"; as the only black student-and notably cosmopolitan with previous stopovers in London, Rome, and New York-Osei is no stranger to racism, both casual and targeted, especially from adults who should know and do better. He's befriended by popular girl Dee, and their burgeoning relationship quickly catches the envious attention of bully Ian, setting in motion inevitable consequences of childhood cruelty. VERDICT Onayemi unmistakably enhances what's on the page, proving again that the Bard is better performed than silently read. Libraries will not want to miss adding the latest series title. ["The emotional lives of 12-year-olds don't quite seem up to the weight of Shakespearean tragedy": LJ 4/15/17 review of the Hogarth: Crown hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.