My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare

Loved it. Funny, irreverent, scholarly, silly, sexy... nay, erotic. All that and Shakespeare too! Lots of fun for the open-minded (the subtitle is its own disclaimer), this book will blow minds in many ways.

Reviewed by Gina Holland for RebeccasReads (7/08) "My Name Is Will" is an awesome book. It has two great storylines, which connect in curious ways. The book starts out with Willie Shakespeare Greenburg. He is a college student at the University of California, writing a paper on The Bard. Low on cash, he agrees to deliver a huge mushroom to a collector, unknowingly becoming a target in the War on Drugs. On the other hand, William Shakespeare teaches Latin in Stratford. One day he is approached by a stranger that gives him a relic from Rome. In his town, he could get hung for this. Over time, Willie and William's lives begin to intertwine in strange ways. Jess Winfield is a great writer, and his writing is clear and understandable. His descriptions of the characters and settings were amazing. My favorite parts, personally, were the chapters with Willie. I liked reading about his friends, his encounters with Dashka, and his whole adventure throughout the story. William's part in the story was interesting as well, but Willie's chapters were more so. You can definitely get a lot out of this book. If you know about, or have ever read about Shakespeare, you get even more from it with the frequent Shakespeare quotes and dialogue. I believe the author was very successful in carrying out the purpose of this book. "My Name Is Will," in my opinion, is most suitable for adults. The storyline and the events that happen are more appropriate for adults because of sexual themes, drug use, etc. All in all, I enjoyed reading "My Name Is Will" very much, and I definitely recommend that others read it. I am definitely looking forward to reading more books from Jess Winfield in the future. He is an amazing author and I am positive that anything that he writes will be just as great and as interesting as this book.

Often, historical characters in fiction are portrayed in the fullness of their achievement. In "My Name Is Will", Shakespeare is presented prior to his becoming a great and well known playwright; he is eighteen, just discovering his talent and starting to figure out his life. This can be a much more interesting period of a character's life I think than the later periods. In this case, it is made even more interesting because Shakespeare is portrayed as a Catholic actively involved with the Catholic underground in England. As Shakespeare is coming to understand his own character and getting to know the bonny maids of Stratford, he is also deeply involved in dangerous intrigues at a fascinating time in English history. All of which is quite a bit of fun. Shakespeare's story is interspersed with the story of Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, a Master's student working on his thesis on Shakespeare and also discovering who he is. In parallel fashion, adroitly handled, both the historical and contemporary Shakespeares find themselves and get their lives going. I think this is one of the key narrative challenges of the piece -- making these parallel stories complement each other -- but it is adroitly handled and I would not want to give up the contemporary reflection of Shakespeare. So...fun on many levels. The story of Elizabethan intrigue was very compelling and could have been a book in itself. The self-discovery of the lead characters was very well handled, making it a more personal and three-dimensional story. Winfield, who co-created and acted in the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has a flawless ear for Elizabethan language and punnery without which the book would not have worked; as it is, it does all come out perfectly, which greatly adds to the realism and charm of the work. I recommend My Name Is Will to anyone who wants a little escapism, a bit of intrigue, a new look at Shakespeare and a lot of romance this summer.

Fans of The Reduced Shakespeare company might wonder exactly where you go after the West End's smash-hit, longest running comedy. Or exactly what else there is to do after performing all Shakepeare's plays, night in and night out, in a scant 87 minutes. Well, wonder no more. Winfield, founding member of the RSC, has answered this conundrum with his tale of two Shakepeares -- one in Stratford-on-Avon, one at UC Santa Cruz -- reaching out and touching each other across space and time, assisted by mind-altering substances. It's a sexy, hyper-literate, romping mash-up of Shakespeare, Tom Robbins, Harold Robbins and Carlos Castaneda. It's kind of hard to resist. And if this doesn't make Shakespeare accessible to a generation of attention-deficient, youtube-addicted teenagers, well, nothing will. Read it. It's a lot of fun.

Fair Disclosure: Jess Winfield is a friend of mine and I admire his writing style. Naturally, when this, his first novel, was published I pre-ordered it weeks ahead and read it immediately upon arrival. At first, I had problems with back-and-forth structure. The chapters of the young Bard's life are powerful and compelling and fun, and William Shakespeare is brought marvelously to life as a likable, talented, if not-yet-focused genius in the making. However the alternate chapters, featuring the modern character Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, are at first tougher to like. This is due to the fact that Willie is, throughout the better part of the novel, an absolute twit. But never fear. In Jess's masterful hands the two very different characters are woven together tighter and tighter until at the climax of the novel they actually do change each other's lives for the better in a brilliantly written and hallucinatory chapter in which the visuals are both confusing and clarifying at the same time. I'll say no more, but that chapter alone is worth buying the whole book just to experience. The ending that follows is immensely satisfying; like coming down gently from an intense high. A great read.