March 7, 2011
Roth's imagining of poets Keats, Byron, and Shelly (a blending of Percy and Mary) in the present day centers almost exclusively on Byron, known as Gordon, despite being narrated by Keats. Following Shelly's apparent suicide, Gordon and Keats steal her ashes and, fleeing Shelly's sexually abusive father, they take a boat out on Lake Erie to fulfill her last wishes. Most of the story consists of Keats relaying Gordon's past adventures, including being sexually abused by his nanny, publishing a YA vampire book, seducing many women—including his cousin and possibly his half-sister—and briefly joining a Greek terrorist squad. Shelly is Gordon's neighbor and childhood best friend, but his feelings for her have remained platonic while she has fallen in love with him; Keats is Shelly's trusted friend, though there are only glimpses of that friendship. Despite the intriguing premise, excessive back-story and rehashing of Gordon's sexual conquests (however accurately they might resemble Lord Byron's) can grow tiring. But though readers may struggle to see past Gordon's unlikable personality, Shelly's ultimate wishes for Gordon and Keats provide satisfying closure. Ages 14–up.
January 1, 2011
Fatalistic teen narrator John Keats opens this tale with his observation that most of us don't matter. Emotionally and financially distanced from his classmates at Trinity High, poor, doomed Keats delivers morbid statistics, occasional sermons about society's evils and the story of George Gordon Byron and Michelle "Shelly" Shelley. He begins with a funeral and ends with a burial, relating Gordon and Shelly's love/hate relationship between the two events. Like their namesakes (the Romantics Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, conflated to create Shelly, Lord Byron and John Keats), all three teenagers write, but their personal drama dwarfs their literary output. They are riveting but not entirely sympathetic characters, particularly Gordon, whom Keats portrays as a callous genius and womanizer. Roth supplements the namesakes' original scandals with abortion, alcohol, incest, masturbation and swearing. As anguished writers and tortured teens are universal, the narrative offers a powerful dose of modern teen cynicism and yearning; a subplot involving freedom fighters unnecessarily complicates an already full story. Lurid yet literary. (afterword, bibliography) (Fiction. 14 & up)
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March 15, 2011
Grades 9-12 In a modern-day Ohio high school near the brooding waters of Lake Erie, Byron is the playboy, Keats the quiet observer, and Shelly the ultimate romantic. Inspired by, and broadly mirroring, the lives and relationships of the Romantic poets, this first novel is lush and emotional, infusing the indulgences, idealism, sensuality, excess, and impulsiveness of the Romantics in a contemporary setting. Michelle Shelly Shelley (a composite of Percy Bysshe and Mary) has drowned in a rumored suicide, and her childhood playmate Gordon Byron recruits her newer friend John Keats to steal her ashes from the memorial, hit the road, and scatter them at the beach where she was found. Keats narrates literary prodigy Byrons sex-god-like exploits with awe and equal measures of admiration and judgment but holds Shelly close to his heart as he searches for a way to make his mark before his own time runs out. An afterword distinguishes fact from fiction, and there is certainly enough enticement here to lead teens back to the source material for a look at these fascinating literary figures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2011
Poets Byron, Keats, and Shelley (here a girl named Shelly) are re-imagined as modern teenagers in Roth's impassioned tribute to Romanticism. Shy outsider John Keats recounts events leading to Shelly's suicide, as he and handsome, self-obsessed Gordon Byron fulfill her final wishes. High school is just a backdrop to the writers' central preoccupations with sex, death, love, and escaping their tragically dysfunctional families.
(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)