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Title: The Sonnets: A Novel by Lennard J. Davis ISBN: 0-7914-4977-7 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.50

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Entertaining and believable
Comment: I enjoyed reading this book and was constantly nodding my head in agreement about how awful teaching and academia can be.

Will Marlow was a sympathetic character who seemed to be making all the wrong choices, dictated by the programmatic nature of Davis' plot, which follows the "plot" of Shakespeare's sonnets to an exacting degree, and sometimes spins out of control. You groan at some of the references, such as the "second-best bed," but just as often you chuckle at Davis' dilemma and the kooky ways he comes up with to match his academia plot with the Elizabethan one. Our previous reviewer is also correct about the sex scenes which for once are genuinely sexy, sharply observed, well done. Hooray for Marlow, Davis, and disgrace!

Rating: 5
Summary: Shakespeare in New York
Comment: This is a comedy of manners, an academic novel, and a spoof on a variety of modernisms. Despite the fact that the Editorial Review above contains what are nearly plot spoilers, there were plenty of surprises, puzzles, sly and enjoyable literary references and plays on words - plus dozens of opportunities for outright guffawing. This is a very, very funny book.

I picked up "The Sonnets" hoping to not need to dutifully flip through Shakespeare's 154 sonnets (plus "A Lover's Complaint") as I went, since - in contrast to the novel's clever and passionate - but comically self-deprecating narrator - I have neither read nor "taught the Bard so long that his thoughts had become mine." I hoped to read one book, not two. I think it went okay. You don't need to have Shakespeare alongside this novel in order to enjoy the goings-on, be appalled at times, delighted at others - and to laugh a lot.

Protagonist Will Marlowe is a readily recognizable fiftyish English professor. He's a smart world-wise guy, a dyed-in-the-wool left-winger with an impeccable intellect, and a freight of desires. He is by turns vexed and thrilled by his wife, his kids, his dull or clever and beautiful students, aspects of work, domestic life, sexuality, and urbanity. He is seducible and cynical at once: he falls for a thing, an idea, a person - but watches himself - carefully. He checks his back.

He has got the soul of the poet combined with a reporter's eye for detail. He is most definitely of this world. Academic life engages him at times, but often gets on his nerves. A colleague has received a MacArthur grant, an endowed chair, "so successfully had he pulled the New Zealand wool over the eyes of the administration," and it stings. Marlowe sniffs, " Meanwhile I remained unacknowledged, occupying a small oak and leather chair that had no name other than that of its manufacturer - the Acme Furniture Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts. I like to think of myself as the Acme Furniture Professor of Shakespearean Studies."

Whether it's a bad dinner guest, scenes of discovery and betrayal, modern manners, urban life, the contents of gourmet food shops, fabulous scenes of love and varieties of endearingly realistic sexual encounters (originally, convincingly, unegomanically and successfully described), an obnoxious colleague, post-modern hijinks and linguistic acrobatics - or a quirky and funny approach to some psychoanalytic themes - all are handled well by Davis.

His protagonist screws things up in ways that are absurd, sometimes reference back to Shakespeare's sonnets, often deeply affecting - and are often laugh-out-loud funny.

An academic novel that is a lot of fun.