Finally got around to reading my old friend's second book. I'm very impressed. ( )

Hamlet is probably one of my all-time favorite Shakespeare plays, so I knew I had to pick this one up, and I'm super glad I did. Myrlin Hermes weaves a world for Hamlet and Horatio outside of the Denmark court, before the death of King Hamlet and all the insanity that followed. The writing style was definitely the first thing that drew me in about this book. I was amazed at the beauty of prose. It's definitely at a level that the Bard would have been proud of. The book begins with Horatio accepting a "translating" job from a baron, where he meets her rather un-lovely wife Adriane. But the book really picks up once Horatio discovers Hamlet by the riverside. The scene in which Horatio and Hamlet first meet is one of my absolute, favorite parts of this book. The prose is vivid and paints a beautiful scene, but it's Hamlet who the reader falls in love with here. Hermes paints him as beautiful and dangerous, intelligent and insane. She captures Shakespeare's Hamlet so beautifully that I knew right from that moment that this book would end up being a favorite of mine.

The characters really give this book depth. Not only can Hermes capture the beauty and complexity of Shakespeare's characters, but she creates Lady Adriane, who's dark and sexy and fits in so well with Horatio and Hamlet that I'm surprised I can't dig her out of the original play itself. Life for Hamlet and Horatio wouldn't have been so difficult if not for Adriane, and in that sense the reader comes to love her and hate her. She's a character that you won't soon forget.

As it's set before the original play, I was expecting certain events to take place at a certain time, so this book would inevitably lead into the play. But I was surprised at the twists and turns that Hermes pulls. They're by no means loud and shocking, but quiet, so quiet that the reader could almost miss the crucial decisions that Horatio makes near the end that inevitably change his and Hamlet's destiny indefinitely. The end is every bit as beautiful as I'd hoped with enough variation from the original text that I never once skimmed or became annoyed with predictability.

If you're a fan of Hamlet, or Shakespeare in general, I highly recommend this book. It's everything you expect it to be and everything you don't. It's dark and sexy and I can't get enough of it.

5/5 Stars. An instant classic. ( )

Not my usual thing, but sold as “Shakespeare turned topsy-turvy,” specifically Hamlet, and I’m a sucker for all things Hamlet. Horatio is a failed academic in Wittenburg; Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, a beauty and wit who hasn’t done much with his life; there are echoes of various other elements of Shakespeare’s play as well as several others. Horatio writes Shakespeare’s sonnets, to Hamlet and to his other lover/patron. It’s sort of a famous phrases/images mashup, like a fever dream you’d have after shotgunning one play after another. I don’t know whether I liked it or just found it familiar. ( )

This novel starts with an intriguing premise: the main narrator is Hamlet's loyal friend, Horatio, and the reader expects a retelling of Shakespeare's famous tragedy. But that's not quite what Myrlin Hermes offers. Instead, it begins as the story of their blossoming friendship/love in Wittenburg, its highs and lows, interspersed with the question of who was Will Shake-speare (in addition to who wrote the plays and sonnets). A mysterious dark lady, Adriane, plays a significant role as Horatio's patron and part of the famous Shakespearean love triangle, rendered here among Adriane, Horatio, and Hamlet. There are plenty of twists and turns to a story and a sonnet sequence that you thought you knew.

For a number of reasons, I almost gave up on this book about 40 pages in. Every page is dotted with quotes and near-quotes from Shakespeare's work, a strategy that I initially found irritating but eventually decided to treat as a game. (Thankfully, I didn't start counting the references, but in addition to Hamlet and the sonnets, Hermes draws on As You Like It, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), King Lear, Othello, Twelfth Night, etc.--even Macbeth's drunken Porter makes a brief appearance. And then there is the scene of Horatio's first meeting with Hamlet. Walking alone by his favorite riverside retreat, Horatio comes across a beautiful, naked, weeping maiden--only it isn't a maiden, it's Hamlet, and he isn't weeping, he's masturbating. So--if that sort of thing bothers you, be forewarned that there are a lot of graphic sex scenes in this novel, both straight and gay. I read on a bit further, and the interesting development of the characters kept me involved (despite an occasion "ick!").

In the end, my reservations and the entertainment factor balanced out, and while I can't recommend The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet to everyone without reservations, it's a jolly good read for those who like Shakespearean spin-offs. ( )

Plot Synopsis
Horatio's ability to think deeply and logically is only challenged by his encounter and subsequent relationship with Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, who is "an outrageous, provocative, and flamboyantly beautiful young man". Their tragically flawed relationship soars and suffers under the manipulations of Horatio's patroness Lady Adriane. Soon, Horatio finds himself rivaled by another poet who seems to have earned the admiration of both Hamlet and Lady Adriane.

My Thoughts
What a beautiful book! Hermes has created something tragic, beautiful, and moving with this novel, entirely worthy of the Shakespearean play it is based on. The trio starring in this story, Hamlet, Horatio, and Lady Adriane, are each cleverly and deeply portrayed while retaining an element of mystery that is intriguing rather than frustrating. Ah, it's difficult to explain myself here. I think what I mean is that I found myself carefully balanced between feeling like I knew these characters intimately and not at all throughout the entirety of the story. And far from keeping me from empathizing with the characters, this delicate balancing act actually made me more involved, made me care more deeply for the characters.

It was something like the feeling or relationship one has with one's parents for that peculiar time between childhood and adulthood. Here are these people (or just one person as in my case) whom you have known all of your life. You know their smell, their sound, their face, their mannerisms; you sometimes know what they will say before they say it and how they will move their hands while they are relating a particular story. And yet, you reach a point where you realize that there is more to your mother and father than what you have known for the first twenty odd years of your life. That they have secret dreams and desires, secret motivations and histories, that make them a more complex being than you once thought. That is how I felt about the main characters in Hermes' novel.

Horatio, as a character, was handled beautifully. His intricacies, such as being a bit prissy and formal or thinking about the etymology of words in times of stress, are cleverly used to add depth to a character readers of Shakespeare are already familiar with. Lady Adriane fascinated me; her role is much more than one would expect, and while I don't want to give too much away, I will say that her cunning and manipulations, while not exactly admirable, do not detract from my admiration for her.

Hamlet intrigued me the most, not because he is better portrayed, but because he is the character I was most familiar with going in to the book (obviously). I have read the play multiple times, taught it in multiple courses, and find something new and interesting in the play and in the character every time. Since we are seeing this world primarily through Horatio's eyes, Hamlet is offered up to the reader in a rather idealized fashion. I believe, however, that this is relatively true to the original as the play Hamlet, while highlighting all of Hamlet's faults, still manages to set him up as a person to be admired, worshiped even - like one would worship an overly intelligent, overly emotion, rather mad god. ( )