Shakespeare’s Othello lives by Chevalier’s law of the playground
by Tracy Chevalier (Hogarth, £12.99)
NEW BOY by Tracy Chevalier is the latest novel from the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, which sees the Bard’s works retold and reimagined by some of the world’s leading contemporary writers.
Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Howard Jacobson have tackled The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale and The Merchant Of Venice and future releases are due from Jo Nesbø and Edward St Aubyn.
Chevalier, author of the multimillion selling Girl With A Pearl Earring, takes the intense and passionate tragedy Othello and transplants it from late 16th-century Venice to a 1970s elementary school in America.
This may sound like an ambitious leap but the themes of love, jealousy, ambition and betrayal translate well into the hyper-emotional world of the school yard.
The new boy of the title is Osei Kokote, the son of a Ghanaian diplomat. The story begins on his first day of sixth grade at a suburban school in Washington. He is used to being the new boy as this is his fourth school in six years.
But his newness is not the only thing that makes him different. Osei is the first black student to register at the school. His arrival leaves the pupils “a parade of pink and cream suburban Americans” open-mouthed in shock while the teachers exude a toxic mixture of fear and crude racism.
The action is contained within five short periods in the school yard over one day.
Before school starts, Osei is befriended by Dee, an all-American blonde who is the most popular girl in the school. She is given the task of looking after Osei but the pair hit it off and sparks fly.
Their obvious closeness gets under the skin of Ian, the school bully, and “the shrewdest... most calculating” boy in his year.
He considers the yard to be “his domain” and immediately sets about undermining the new friendship, inflaming an already volatile situation until a tragic conclusion seems inevitable. This is a compact and intense read full of twists, turns and intrigue. The fast-moving shifting allegiances and rivalries that dominate the playground provide a backdrop full of heightened emotion that cleverly reflects the atmosphere of the original play. However, at times it feels constrained by the structure and perhaps would have felt more convincing if the passionate love and betrayal between Dee and Osei hadn’t been limited to a single day, especially as it hurtles towards its dramatic conclusion.