An enthralling new telling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—told from the perspective of Juliet’s nurse.
In Verona, a city ravaged by plague and political rivalries, a mother mourning the death of her day-old infant enters the household of the powerful Cappelletti family to become the wet-nurse to their newborn baby. As she serves her beloved Juliet over the next fourteen years, the nurse learns the Cappellettis’ darkest secrets. Those secrets—and the nurse’s deep personal grief—erupt across five momentous days of love and loss that destroy a daughter, and a family.
By turns sensual, tragic, and comic, Juliet’s Nurse gives voice to one of literature’s most memorable and distinctive characters, a woman who was both insider and outsider among Verona’s wealthy ruling class. Exploring the romance and intrigue of interwoven loyalties, rivalries, jealousies, and losses only hinted at in Shakespeare’s play, this is a never-before-heard tale of the deepest love in Verona—the love between a grieving woman and the precious child of her heart.
In the tradition of Sarah Dunant, Philippa Gregory, and Geraldine Brooks, Juliet’s Nurse is a rich prequel that reimagines the world’s most cherished tale of love and loss, suffering and survival.
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“In
Shakespeare’s play, all we know of the world’s most famous star-crossed lovers
happens over a period of five days. Lois Leveen’s imaginative retelling covers
all the years before—from the nurse’s point of view. Nicola Barber delights
with her full-bodied, earthy performance of Angelica and her lusty husband,
Pietro. When Angelica’s baby daughter dies in childbirth, Friar Lorenzo helps
her become live-in wet nurse to the Cappaletta’s newborn girl. Angelica becomes
irrationally devoted to Juliet, convinced that she’s truly her baby, switched
at birth. Barber portrays aged Lord Cappaletta’s disappointment at not having a
son and is convincing as Lady Cappaletta is driven to the edge of madness. She
handles Elizabethan morés, beekeeping secrets, and hot-blooded teens engaged in
an ancient feud with quicksilver vocal shifts. Wonderful listening. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
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