Book #2 and #3: Caliban's Hour and Switcheroo

#2 Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams
fiction, (c)1994, 201pp
rating: ****

In the tradition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is Dead, this book is a re-telling of Shakespeare by a minor character. In this case, it is a retelling of The Tempest by the Shakespearean sidenote of Caliban, part of the comic relief in The Tempest. The book opens with a confrontation between Caliban and a now-middle-aged Miranda in her castle in Naples. He threatens to kill her after he spends one hour telling him his full story and explaining how she and her father ruined his life. Caliban tells her in his own words about his early childhood on the island with his mother, Sycorax, and describes the arrival of Prospero and Miranda and how their appearance changed his life.

Williams takes Caliban from being the butt of a joke to a thinking, feeling human being who was deeply wronged by the two protagonists of The Tempest. Williams prose is rich and detailed enough to satisfy most readers and in the end, he presents Shakespeare's version with this brief line: We arrived at the house on the hillside at least, to discover the game was played, the story told, and we three by comic afterthoughts..

People familiar with the story would probably appreciate this book more than those with no prior knowledge of The Tempest.

#3 Switcheroo by Olivia Goldsmith
fiction, (c)1998 , 265pp
rating: *

I don't know if it's that I've gotten older, more cynical and more discriminating or if Olivia Goldsmith's writing has fallen down a very slippery slope into the worst kind of chicklit possible. I'd like to think it's the latter as I remember liking The First Wives Club very much when it first came out, as well as Flavor of the Month. So, it was actually with anticipation that I dove into Switcheroo, a book I found collecting dust in our garage.

The plot is a simple one. Sylvie, a successful, forty-year old woman discovers her husband is having an affair with a younger woman. Upon confronting her, she discovers that the younger woman (Marla) is a dead-ringer for a younger version of her. Marla wants to be married and Sylvie wants the romance back. So off the go for a little bit of plastic surgery so they can switch places for two weeks - Marla to secure Bob as her husband, and Sylvie to get back at him.

The premise of this book is awful and ridiculous. It's poorly written. It re-treads themes from her earlier book (plastic surgery to get ahead, husbands having affairs with younger woman) but without any of the subversive aspects that made them better than simple chicklit. This book has the odious character of Sylvie's mother who tells her she'll never find someone better than Bob and not to make waves about his affair. Cheating is seen as an inevitablity in this book, as is the wife's forgiveness. The only wife that didn't forgive her husband for cheating is painted as a shrewish woman that no one could possibly love.

And surprise, surprise - all the women (except the shrew) find their happy endings though not necessarily in the expected way... oh wait, all of the ending was expected for me. I do not recommend this book.