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Mary Catherine O'Connor and Joe Roper are graduate students at Northwestern cataloging the Kellogg collection of Elizabethan books and manuscripts recently bequeathed to the University. Mary Cat takes off for London to become one of the Sisters of Mercy, because she believes she has a vocation, leaving Joe to slog through the boxes alone. It's a depressing task because Frank Kellogg, like so many rich collectors, was easily taken in by con men and forgers. Joe finds a letter that is purportedly in Shakespeare's hand and signed WS that says Cecil wrote Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The letter has all the outward trappings of not being a forgery. Joe, whose mentors when young, decided that Shakespeare must have spent time in Italy during the lost years, is desolate. If this is real, then all his research, and all the research done by his advisers, will be useless. Enter Posy Gould, rich spoiled California brat, Harvard student, who believes Oxford wrote Shakespeare. She uses Daddy's credit cards to buy first class tickets on the next plane to London, taking Joe with her on his first trip abroad. Joe sees modern London but he can visualize Shakespeare's London overlaid on the present day. Joe's mantra is "God is a librarian" ; the truth will reveal itself is one seeks it. Posy gradually turns Joe into a believer in the Oxfordian point of view. Smith slyly turns scholarship into a cosmic joke. If one searches long enough and hard enough, one can prove any thesis. She is also a master at making a city live. She did it with turn of the century Paris in THE KNOWLEDGE OF WATER and she does it with 16th century London and Stratford in CHASING SHAKESPEARES.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, September 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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