Romeo & Juliet

“For never was a story of more woe. Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”

Arguably the greatest love story ever told; the tragic lives of Romeo and Juliet are famous across the world. I don’t need to explain the story as everybody knows it.
The movie version I will discuss in this review is the 1996 Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles.
Romeo + Juliet was originally written sometime in the mid 16th century by William Shakespeare however this version is set in modern times in the fictional town of Verona Beach, Florida. Despite the new setting the story is not interfered with too much which greatly surprised me.
Luhrmann and his screenplay writers must have gone to great trouble to ensure Shakespeare’s original play was recreated as faithfully as possible. Obviously some changes had to be made but I feel they added a modern appeal to the movie that others lack. Some of the changes are obvious; Instead of swords and bucklers the characters carry guns. Instead of riding horses they drive cars. The film is heavily stylised and visually very impressive. The music is stunning and really helps bring the story to life.


One of the most surprising aspects of the movie for me is the dialogue. To my mind it would be common sense that since the entire setting of the story was moved forward a few hundred years surely the dialogue would be modern too? Not a bit of it. Shakespeare’s words remain in the movie and although they are alerted at times they have largely remained faithful. It takes a bit of getting used to but it really does work very well and is worth persevering with.
The acting is fantastic, DiCaprio and Danes are very convincing as the star crossed lovers and really seemed to put everything into their performances. The supporting roles are just as good with convincing and emotive performances from John Leguizamo as the hot blooded Tybalt, Harold Perrineau as the facetious, fun loving Mercutio, British legend Pete Postlethwaite as Father Lawrence and Paul Sorvino as Fulgencio Capulet.

It is also rare for a romance story as it has elements for both a male and female audience. Not only is it a story of love and passion but it also covers the darker side of love; hate, jealousy and deceit. The confrontations between the Montagues and Capulets are truly electrifying. There is also a good amount of humour, one of my favourite scenes being the opening confrontation between the Montague and Capulet families at a gas station.

Some aspects from the play are left out of the film such as the death of Paris and Lady Montague and Juliet not trusting Father Lawrence not to poison her but I do not feel these were central points in the story as a whole anyway.


I bought a copy of Romeo and Juliet from a bookshop in Verona itself as I felt that would be special. I am a romantic sort really although I am aware the story is a work of fiction and didn’t truly happen (at least not the way Shakespeare wrote about)
I had never actually sat down and read the book before; I never studied it in school although I knew what the story was about.

The story is a masterpiece and should be taught in every school. Because it was written by Shakespeare to be performed on stage by actors it would not necessarily be easy for someone who hadn’t seen it in play form or on television to visualise the story. Because it was written as a play there are no descriptions of background, clothing or general appearance, just words spoken by each character, basic actions (such as ‘they fight’ or ‘Romeo exits’) the rest is left to the imagination.

If I had just picked up the book without having seen the film I would probably not have enjoyed it so much. The words are beautiful and meaningful even now although they do require some translation nowadays.

The version I bought had notes inside which explained certain words and sayings which I never would have guessed (I never knew ‘French slop’ meant ‘baggy trousers’!) without the notes the full meaning of entire pages would have been lost to me.
This story is timeless and both the book and movie are well worth seeing even for grumpy blokes like me!

Final verdict 5/5 for both movie and book

By Chris

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

'By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply within Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched – for a much lesser price – into convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city states of Italy, up to half of all noble women became nuns.
Not all of them went willingly.......'

The main character in Sacred Hearts is Serafina who is forced into the Italian convent of Santa Caterina at aged 16 to live a life of prayer and solitude. Meanwhile her sister marries into a good family who will also receive a sizeable dowry. Serafina is angry to the point of hysteria and refuses to sing in the choir for which the convent is famed for. As she becomes more determined to refuse her fate so a battle of wills sets in between her and the Mother superior.

This book is set just before huge changes were made to convents. When Serafina joins, the convent runs very much like a small business. The nuns frequently organize concerts and sell produce in order to cover their costs and squirrel away profit. The nuns themselves in the book are like any small community, a mixed bunch. Some have chosen the life of a nun while others like Serafina have not. There are a lot of power struggles within the convent (not surprising perhaps in a community made up of only women) and Serafine herself becomes a pawn in these struggles.

I found reading about life in a convent fascinating. The book did a good job of describing the disadvantages these women had such as a lack of passion, solitude and no children but also highlighted the advantages and freedom compared to other women during that time.

Although convent life was depicted as happy for the most part, there were dark aspects running throughout. The self harm and the fasting which some of the nuns indulged in would be diagnosed as anorexia today. The mother superior places the good of the convent above the welfare of individuals and even when talking about Serafina she declares; ‘She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.' The mother superior is only however trying to preserve the convents way of life and trying to protect the nuns from the changes taking place.

The plot itself although slow in places kept my interest and is cleverly set in amongst the backdrop of the monotonous routine of prayer and work. I kept reading on to see if Serafina will escape or if she, like so many others before her, will finally accept her fate and try to carve out some kind of life for herself within the convent walls.

An interesting story with an even more interesting subject matter.

Verdict 4/5

Posted by Jess

Literary Tattoo

Three days ago I got my first ever literary tattoo.

'Byzantium I come not from' is the first line of the Ray Bradbury poem of the same name. I am not usually a fan of poetry but I really like this particular one. I've even memorised it. To me the poem evokes the feeling of a happy childhood and a good home both of which I was lucky enough to get. To me the tattoo also serves as a tribute to Ray Bradbury, a man whose books I really enjoy reading.

The tattoo is still healing which is why it looks a little red around the edges but I wanted to post a pic ASAP as I have no patience :o)

Here is the poem in full;

Byzantium
I come not from
But from another time and place
Whose race was simple, tried and true;
As boy
I dropped me forth in Illinois,
A name with neither love nor grace
Was Waukegan. There I came from
And not, good friends, Byzantium.
And yet in looking back I see
From topmost part of farthest tree
A land as bright, beloved and blue
As any Yeats found to be true.

The house I lived in, hewn of gold
And on the highest market sold
Was dandelion-minted made
By spendthrift bees in bee-loud glade.
And then of course our finest wine
Came forth from that same dandelion,
While dandelion was my hair
As bright as all the summer air;
I dipped in rainbarrels for my eyes
and cherries stained my lips, my cries,
My shouts of purest exaltation;
Byzantium? No. That Indian nation
Which made of Indian girls and boys
Spelled forth itself as Illinois.
Yet all the Indian bees did hum:
Byzantium.
Byzantium.
So we grew up with mythic dead
To spoon upon midwestern bread
And spread old gods' bright marmalade
To slake in peanut-butter shade,
Pretending there beneath our sky
That it was Aphrodite's thigh;
Pretending too, that Zeus was ours
And Thor fell down in thundershowers.

While by the porch-rail calm and bold
His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold
My grandfather, a myth indeed,
Did all of Plato supersede
While Grandmama in rockingchair
Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care
Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright
To winter us on summer night.
And uncles, gathered with their smokes
Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes,
And aunts as wise as Delphic maids
Dispensed prophetic lemonades
To boys knelt there as acolytes
To Grecian porch on summer nights;
Then wen to bed, there to repent
The evils of the innocent;
The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears
Said, through the nights and through the years
Not Illinois nor Waukegan
But blither sky and blither sun.
Though mediocre all our Fates
And Mayor not as bright as Yeats
Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum?
Byzantium.
Byzantium.



Post by Chris

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

The last book in the NTTBG was Fledgling by the late Octavia Butler. I was looking forward to this one firstly because it was a vampire book (I cannot resist these) and secondly because it was written by a female science fiction writer. Unfortunately I was very disappointed by this book.

It seems a writer cannot write a vampire book these days without twisting the genre in someway in order to make it their own. What did Butler do? Well the Vampires in her book do not live forever, just a very long time. They do need human blood to survive but only a small amount at a time meaning that they don’t kill their victims and taking blood is extremely pleasurable for the human. In order to survive a vampire will have around 6-8 humans who live with them and act as personal blood banks each taking it in turns to give them blood/sex whatever. The bond between the vampire and these humans is apparently so strong that if one of the humans dies the vampire is practically crippled by the pain this brings.

The book follows ‘Shori’ a female vampire who has been genetically modified to make her black and therefore more comfortable in sunlight. She wakes in a forest suffering from amnesia and has to firstly find out who and what she is, how to survive, where to find others like her and who wants to kill her.

I had quite a few problems with this book. Firstly although Shori is technically 53 years old, she only looks about 12 so when she has sex with her human companion it’s a bit disturbing to read. It’s never made clear if the human in question wants to have sex with her because they share some kind of blood bond or if he finds young girls sexually attractive as they go at it quite soon after meeting.

Most of the book is spent wittering on needlessly about the complicated lifestyle of Butler’s vampires while ‘Shori’ finds out about her vampire nature and the ways of her human companions. It got boring and very very silly. Also the fact that Shori is black and is genetically engineered are themes that in my opinion were not fully explored, I feel that Butler really missed a good opportunity here. I did however finish this book because the writing itself was not bad and I think I will try this author again as she seems to be a very popular writer.

I just think I miss the good old days of Anne Rice, when Vampires were non sexual creatures, could not go out in daylight, slept in coffins and who saw most humans as food. Authors seem to want to humanise vampires but in order to do so they have to either skirt around the issue of their diet or change it completely. I realise this could become a whole other post but I miss the old ‘monsters’ which is really what they are.

Verdict 2/5

Posted by Jess

Something Wicked This Way Comes

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes"

Macbeth, William Shakespeare



Yet another shining triumph for Ray Bradbury. If the vaunted American wordsmith keeps up at this pace he’ll soon be my favourite writer.

Something Wicked This Way Comes was hailed as a coming of age story, myself I’m not so sure. The two main characters are teenage friends from small town Illinois who fall foul of Mr Dark, the mysterious proprietor of the carnival that arrives in town in the middle of the night. It soon becomes apparent that this is no ordinary carnival and Mr Dark and his sinister freaks are no normal circus performers. Although growing up is a theme that is explored I feel survival against evil is a stronger theme here.

The story sounds simple enough but it is anything but. Bradbury writes with such masterful elegance I found myself transported beyond a simple horror story. The story cannot be simply defined in familiar terms such as ‘thriller’ ‘fantasy’ or ‘horror’ the truth is it is a wonderful mixture of all three. Although horror is at the heart of the story Bradbury infuses it with a poetic charm that is unexpected but effective. It added a further dimension to the story and only increased my interest. It is arguable how much this style leant to the story but in my view it improved it greatly (once I got over my initial surprise)



The friendship between the two boys is heart warming and Mr Dark is a chilling villain. He can truly make your skin crawl. The part of the book involving the hot air balloon is very frightening (I won’t say more than that!) although the two stories are quite different the story did bring to mind Stephen King's 'IT' but I imagine thats because they are both tales of adolesants in small town America trying to defeat a malevolent evil.

I thoroughly recommend this book

Final score 5/5

By Chris

Juliet's balcony

After a very relaxing and hot week we are back in the UK. We stayed in the lakes region of Italy which is incredibility beautiful but also expensive (even by Italian standards) While we were there we took a trip into Verona and visited the only literary connection of our holiday; Juliet's balcony.

Juliet's balcony is located in a small courtyard just off one of the main shopping streets in the city of Verona. To get to the balcony visitors must walk through a stone tunnel leading to the courtyard. The tunnel is covered with graffiti and post-it notes all covered with beautiful declarations of love such as 'Sharon & Ross 4 ever'


The courtyard is quite small and located there in the far corner is the famous balcony where Juliet called “Romeo Romeo where for art thou Romeo?” and a statue of Juliet herself beneath it. The courtyard was very crowded and busy which isn't really clear from the photo taken. I also noticed that people who were posing for photographs next to the statue of Juliet were fondling her breasts (it certainly looked like it anyway) I later found out that local tradition dictates if you rub Juliet's right breast then you will find a new lover within the year, I'm glad I found this out as it really did look very odd otherwise.


So what connects this balcony to the fictional character of Juliet? Not a lot. There were two families who lived in Verona named the Cappellettis and the Montecchis (later changed by Shakespeare to Capulet and Montague) but there is little evidence to suggest that that the Cappellettis ever set foot here. The house was brought by the Veronese authoriries in 1936 after George Cukor's oscar winning production of Romeo & Juliet. They then “restored” the balcony. There are various other tourist destinations scattered around the city all allegedly linked to Romeo and Juliet and all equally bogus. The original story was fictional so why not the props as well?

The balcony does however look the part and while there are far bigger and better things to see in Verona, its a nice little spot to take a photo and if you are the romantic sort (as Chris is) i'm sure you'd enjoy the experience.

Posted by Jess