New Boy

Take off your kid gloves, Diane. He doesn't need special treatment just because he's bl– a new boy.

As the latest title in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, New Boy is author Tracy Chevalier's take on updating one of the Bard's plays – in this case Othello – and the more of the books I read in this series, the more I wonder if the concept can really be done well: Even when Shakespeare, writing four centuries ago, borrowed from the ancient tales, he didn't try to set them in the London of his day; and I think that he got away with not quite credible storylines by winking at the audience with, “That's just the way they did things in Verona or Denmark or Scotland; it's different there.” Unfortunately, in addition to not buying into the plot, I didn't think New Boy was terribly well written either, with one caveat: it might be an interesting introduction to Shakespeare for preteens; kids who don't question the plot, can identify with young love and schoolyard bullies, and don't mind being spoonfed some social history. Not for me.

O and Dee
Sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love, then comes marriage
Then comes Dee with a baby carriage!

In a way, Chevalier had the perfect concept: Othello is re-imagined as eleven-year-old Osei (or “O”); the son of a Ghanaian Diplomat, he has been the “new boy” in school four times in six years – and as the only black student in this 1970's Washington D.C. Middle School, he is the perfect outsider character that might inspire not just prejudice, but jealousy, too. Desdemona is Dee – the pretty, popular girl who has never given her heart lightly – and Iago is Ian; schoolyard bully whose behaviour is not just mean, but newly, cruelly, testosterone-fueled. If characters are going to act crazy – fall in love at first sight and then try to literally destroy each other because of blinding jealousies and puerile power plays – where better to place the story than at the dawn of puberty? It's almost believable. But by having the story play out in one day – O and Dee meet before first bell, are in love by first recess, Ian starts to poison O's mind while Dee goes home for lunch, O and Dee break up at afternoon recess, and something like tragedy occurs on the playground after school – this short book (less than two hundred pages) felt needlessly rushed. Chevalier also tries to squeeze into this brief treatment some explanatory backstories for her characters – their teacher, Mr. Brabant, is a racist because he had some of them in his platoon in 'Nam, and Affirmative Action means that a black kid doesn't have to, and never will, try at school; Ian has always paid for the bad reputations of his older brothers and gets spanked with a belt at home; O's older sister has gotten involved with the Black Power movement, and maybe O won't accept racism so casually any more – and with clipped sentences and telling-not-showing, none of this felt literary:

Another time his words and tone would have stung, for of all the adults at the school, Mr. Brabant was the one she most wanted to please. But today was different – Dee had found someone new whose opinion she suddenly cared about more. And someone Mr. Brabant was judging. Dee didn't like his tone. Still, she could not disobey her teacher. The best response, she decided, was to take her time rather than rush to please him. As she began to saunter past Mr. Brabant toward the entrance, she could feel him staring at her, clearly aghast at her new attitude. It made Dee feel powerful.

Three (maybe four?) times, an adult character refers to O as “the bl– new boy”, we hear about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, the athletes who gave the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, Ghanaian Chiefs who cooperated with the slave trade (offering a few of their subjects in return for the freedom of the rest), and at the climax, overt racism: Chevalier was obviously using this book to make some social commentary, but if you're not a Middle Schooler yourself, nothing would be new or illuminating. 

As the second book in this series to which I've given two stars, I must say that I'm disappointed overall with the whole Hogarth Shakespeare series. Harumph.

Books in the Hogarth Shakespeare series:

Shylock is My Name

Vinegar Girl

The Gap of Time

Hag-Seed

New Boy

Dunbar

Macbeth

And Related:

Nutshell