Fair Rosaline

Flipping everything you thought you knew about star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet on its head, and drawing from several Rosalines in Shakespeare’s work, Natasha Solomons’ Fair Rosaline recasts Romeo as a serial predator and groomer of young girls - a trait that’s actually present in the original tragic play. As Solomons points out in her Author Note, “the real tragedy is that none of the adults protects the children,” which is exactly what Juliet and Rosaline were. In contrast, in this exhilarating, subversive novel, Rosaline Capulet fights back, speaks out, protects her younger cousin Juliet and exposes male abuses of women. And all this is exquisitely presented as a lusciously-written literary thriller.

With Rosaline’s family “adrift in misery” following the death of her mother, she discovers she’s to be sent to a nunnery, which leaves her furious: “she did not want to be hidden behind a wall. She wanted the world, all its glories and its sorrows and rottenness. How dare they take it from her?” So, she resolves to “delight in every pleasure possible” until she loses her freedom in twelve days’ time.

As a result, Rosaline attends a ball of “dark delights” that’s being hosted by the rival Montague family: “if the devil himself was playing host, she would attend with ribbons in her hair.” Here she meets and falls in love with Romeo, who offers her passion and marriage as an alternative to the nunnery: “he was the finest man she’d ever seen, and he was kind to her but, most of all, he offered hope.”

Soon enough, though, Romeo’s possessiveness and manipulative nature become apparent, along with revelations from a previous victim, just as he turns his attention to thirteen-year-old Juliet. But Rosaline is prepared to risk everything to protect Juliet, and to honour the women whose lives Romeo ruined.