Erica Jong
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987
The modern-day actress Jessica Pruit is in Venice filming a modern-day version of The Merchant of Venice when she falls ill and is somehow transported back to the sixteenth-century. Also in Venice at that time is Shakespeare, who is there to avoid a plague outbreak in England. In Jessica, he finds inspiration in a steamy and chronologically uninhibited romance. Shakespeare is romantic, impetuous, bi-sexual, and prone to quote himself. Also published in 2003 as Shylock’s Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice. —VH