Review: Romeo and/or Juliet by Ryan North

Before we get started, here's my most recent Bernice Summerfield review: Legion.

Trade paperback, 400 pages
Published 2016

Acquired June 2016

Read March 2018

Romeo and/or Juliet: a chooseable-path adventure by Ryan North and William Shakespeare and You because you decide what happens next not to mention all the Artists who made some great illustrations so really there's a lot of credit to go around here and that doesn't even mention the editors, designers, and typesetters all of whom do important work that goes unacknowledged all too often

I was effusive in my praise for Ryan North's previous William Shakespeare chooseable-path adventure, To Be or Not To Be. I was much less into Romeo and/or Juliet. What I don't know exactly is why. Romeo and/or Juliet was interesting and fun, but it felt more like work and less like joy than To Be or Not To Be. Was I in the wrong mood? Did the gag wear thin? Or is Hamlet just that much more bonkers than Romeo and Juliet, and thus a better target for Ryan North's irreverent reverence? Two teens so in love that after one day and one fuck they decide to commit double suicide seems bonkers, and North plays with a lot of the story's contrivances, but the book's bizarreness felt staid compared to the previous volume. Also some of the jokes are overused-- okay, breakfast, haha, yes I too love brunch. And while the chooseable-path-adventure-within-a-chooseable-path-adventure of The Murder of Gonzago was completely appropriate for Hamlet, the inclusion of three different ones here felt like irrelevant padding. (They're based on Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the latter has Pyramus and Thisbe nestled within it.)

That said, there's plenty of fun to be had. My favorite part was the secret character; if you "beat" the "game," you get to play as Rosaline, the woman Romeo is in love with before he meets Juliet. Rosaline's narrative is a first-person hard-bitten noir pastiche, trying to solve the mystery of why Romeo's mother conveniently died offstage just before the final scene, and it is fantastic.

I did diagram the novel again, and it did make me appreciate intellectually the work North put into the book, even if aesthetically I was less intrigued by it this time around.