Choice Review

Sanders's study of appropriating Shakespeare joins the community of other recent explorations, among them Adaptations of Shakespeare, ed. by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (2000); Shakespeare and Appropriation, ed. by Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer (1999); Marianne Novy's Transforming Shakespeare (CH, Nov'99). Sanders focuses specifically on "how contemporary women novelists" adapt Shakespeare's texts, and she notes that women are especially drawn to Shakespeare's comedies and late plays because of their themes of gender and identity. For example, Sanders offers insightful connections between Shakespeare's "convention of happy endings" and two contemporary novels: Barbara Trapido's Juggling (1994) and Angela Carter's Wise Children (1991). She explores other modern connections to Shakespeare such as postcolonial issues from The Tempest as they appear in Marina Warner's Indigo (1992) and Leslie Forbes's Bombay Ice (1998). Sanders's sensitive, descriptive, even poetic interpretations of these intertextual relationships invite the reader into the Burkean parlor of this discussion. The book is clearly written, solidly contextualized, and well documented with endnotes after each chapter and a 14-page bibliography. Even though "new appropriations, new re-visions of Shakespeare by women writers are, no doubt emerging," Sanders picks a point in time and adds a comfortable and insightful voice to this ongoing conversation about sustained engagements with the Bard. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. S. Carducci Winona State University