BEVERLEY NAIDOO's review:

The idea of exploring the relationship between Shylock and Jessica is extremely interesting and, for me, is essentially the book’s strength. Pressler engages my sympathy for both daughter and father. With Jessica, this is especially for her predicament after she has escaped the fundamentalist society within the Jewish Ghetto into the decadence of the Christian court. Pressler also allows us, very skilfully, insight into the vulnerability behind Shylock’s defensive exterior at the very point when in Shakespeare’s play we are encouraged to turn against him. While she develops Tubal very credibly, I find her portrayal of the Ghetto, at times, rather didactic.

Certainly it is a highly didactic, authoritarian society that she is conveying but as a reader I occasionally feel overwhelmed by the chunks of information – as in Chapter 3 where, through Shylock, we get some of the history of different Jewish communities. I like the device of the softer-voiced Dalilah as a counterpoint to Jessica and also the cross-dressing when she goes on her mission to Jessica. But how credible is the ending? This young girl who, apart from those few days going under-cover to Belmont, has spent her entire life enclosed in the Ghetto, making her way solo across the Ottoman Empire to Jerusalem? Is this not the author’s politics talking?

Another concern is the negative portrayal of characters with disabilities. No doubt disability was viewed very negatively at the time but, especially given the theme of prejudice against Jews, is there not a way to encourage readers to make connections?

I was also left wondering about how full a picture we have been given of 16th century Venice. Shakespeare’s Othello is subtitled The Moor of Venice and his play alerts us, amongst much else, to anti-black racism. How would Shylock and his fellow European Jews, who experienced the full force of anti-semitism, have viewed black Venetians? My suspicion is that many of them would have shared the anti-black prejudices of Christian Europe. If Pressler had touched on this, how interesting it would have been for us as readers to get a glimpse into the layers of prejudice and blindness within human beings, especially in a book which Macmillan are promoting as dealing with contemporary issues.

Beverley Naidoo has a website: www.beverleynaidoo.com