Love Erica Jong, not my favorite of her books, more to follow...

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

I feel like I'm being pursued by stories with time travel themes, making me wonder if, like Serenissima's Jessica Pruitt, I'll be snatched into another era, for better or for worse, to feel out the local dialect and my social standing in time to outrun my foes.

Jessica, the actress, returns to Venice for a film festival and to film her next movie, but when her director disappears, she stays on in Venice as the weather turns cold, blending into the local society and trying to forget her life back in Los Angeles. Halfway into the story, she finds herself in the ghetto of 1592, a character in The Merchant of Venice, and with Will Shakespeare as her lover. With plenty of sex and violence to keep her occupied, she nearly manages to forget her life in 1984. She almost wants to stay back and finish out her life with Will, but she knows he needs to get back to England to write his plays and poems, and she herself has unfinished business in the 20th century, so she needs to devise a way to return to her own time.

Some quotations?

"For two who love with eyes, with words, the first carnal touch unlocks all else - and with it, the entire future, fair or foul."

"He is a trifle wicked, I know now, and wildly mischievous abed - now puppyish, now playfully violent, now tender. My thighs ache for him and my heart seems ready to explode whenever he touches me. There was no way not to fall in love with this man; it was written in the heavens, spelled out in the starry constellations in whose fire all loves are foretold. And now my resolve, my independence, are of no account to me - and I am tethered to him, thigh to thigh, by raging lust, the poetry bred in the blood, God's plan to trick us into reproducing our own kind, at any cost."

"All time is continuous and flowing, and it flows, I'm convinced, in a circular pattern. But it is easier to get from 1984 to 1592 than from Venice to Bassano by boat carrying a baby."

This is the only book I've read by Jong. Picked it up because it is set in Venice and really liked it.

Maybe I'm a bit of a literature Neanderthal, but I actually needed a dictionary on hand to look up some of the words she uses. Fun read!

Absolutely bonkers. Erica Jong is at once a caricature of herself and an absolute unironic treasure. I had so much goddamn fun with this sparkling fever-dream of a novel.

A beautifully written story of an actress who attends a film festival in Venice, then heads into the past to meet young Will. As she studies for the part of Jessica, Shylock's daughter in the The Merchant of Venice, a witch casts a spell that brings the past and present together.

The best thing about this is that its finally over, I have never been quite so disappointed by written word since F. Scott Fitzgerald's Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I'm sure that she has written great things, however this isn't one of them. I was truly looking forward to time travelling with Willy Shakes, and instead. I was fooled by an extremely creative cover and an insanely awesome plot. I just wish it was more, I don't know, I wish it was more than what it was. Christ!

Så glad jag blev när jag hittade denna bok av Erica Jonge på en loppis, ”Rädd att flyga” är en favoritbok!! Började läsa och tio sidor in tyckte jag att handlingen hade någonting; en amerikansk skådespelerska åker till Venedig för att sitta i juryn för filmfestivalen och därefter spela in en film inspirerad av Shakespeare i samma stad. Döm av min förvåning när boken halvvägs in byter karaktär till en dålig historia i Outlanderstil (ni som sett serien vet). VA??? Jag som tyckte boken började så bra. Venedigkär och Erica Jong-fan, det kunde ju inte bli bättre? Men slutligen blev den här boken den sämsta jag läst på LÄNGE. Drömhistorien (ja hon drömmer och färdas i tiden) är inte ens rolig eller intressant. Visserligen kan Jong sin sak - en googling säger att hon är litteraturvetare med specialområde Shakespeare och Shakespeares tid - men snälla rara det är tramsigare än en dålig romantisk chic-litbok. Sådan besvikelse!!!!! Så om ni inte älskar Venedig och Outlander - plocka inte upp denna på en loppis.

My favourite Erica Jong's novel. I haven't read this in many years but the memories are good ones. I loved the timelessness of the storytelling, the out of time, out of body experience, Shakespeare in Venice and how the heroine slips into Jessica's persona trying to live up to what she knows of the play's history.

I'm definitely gonna reread it this year.

This book is split into two parts with incredibly blurred boundaries. These two sections are divided by hundreds of years but told by the same narrator, accompanied by her strong and whimsical voice. There is a great reverence placed upon music, poetry, love, and the arts at large. A special emphasis is given to Shakespeare from the beginning, and this fixation escalates over the course of the novel. Jong breathes life into the work of Shakespeare in a unique and remarkable manner. The writing is simply gorgeous, intense imagery and longing bleeds off the pages. Excellent read.

Quotes:

"Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of out lives are"(1)

"I will never be in love again-unless it is with someone I invent, or someone centuries dead"(96)

"Until then I shall just lie here slipping in and out of time, waiting to see which century will claim me, whether I love a dead man or a living, whether I myself am dead or alive, mad or sane"(90)

"I am a poet. Poets know everything"(71)

"Romanticism and antiromanticism, flip sides of the same coin"(31)

"He had stirred me to the bottom of my being and then fled"(8)

The first half, 100 pages or so, with a middle-aged actress showing up to a film festival in Venice, is vapid and repetitive. The second half, where she magically goes back in time to meet and fall in love with “Will” Shakespeare, gets off to a laughably unerotic start with him in a threesome. I’ll spare you the details, and hope I forget them. Not recommended.

Las primeras páginas del libro comienzan a mezclar la visita de una gran actriz de cine en el festival de Venecia con desvaríos de su vida. Más adelante y mediante la intervención de una anciana y un anillo que ésta le regala, viajará en el tiempo hasta la época de William Shakespeare y conocerá a éste. Ella será la Jessica del Mercader de Venecia, una judía de la que Shakespeare se enamora locamente a pesar de ser padre de familia. La historia estaría bien si la protagonista no se repitiera constantemente sobre su madre, su hija, y desvaríos varios.
No me ha terminado de convencer.