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Sex with Shakespeare

Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spanking

When it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide her—until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeare’s language flowing through her blood for the first time. In Sex with Shakespeare, she tells the story of how the Bard’s plays helped her embrace her unusual sexual identity and find a love story of her own.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, Keenan’s smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With fourteen of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality—from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist—like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of “privacy.” The Taming of the Shrew goes inside the secret world of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, while King Lear exposes the ill-fated king as a possible sexual predator. Moving through the canon, Keenan makes it abundantly clear that literature is a conversation. In Sex with Shakespeare, words are love.

As Keenan wanders the world in search of connection, from desert dictatorships to urban islands to disputed territories, Shakespeare goes with her —and provokes complex, surprising, and wildly important conversations about sexuality, consent, and the secrets that simmer beneath our surfaces.

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    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2016

      Interspersed with passages of close literary readings of Shakespeare are revealing descriptions of the author's coming to terms with her sexual identity. Her writing is clear, relatable, and steady, even when conveying painful events. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, Keenan only briefly touches on her disease and the childhood sexual abuse she experienced. Instead, she focuses on the meaning of Shakespeare in her life and the Bard's role in her self-discovery. VERDICT Thoroughly enjoyable, not just for the juicy bits of Shakespeare, but also for the sex-positive message. Recommended for anyone working through issues of sexuality and identity. [See Memoir, 2/17/16; ow.ly/Tet6300b88f.]--Rachael Dreyer (RD)

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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  • English

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