It was weird to listen to a book and feel my regard for it slipping away with each hour. I thought mining Shakespeare's life would be interesting and novel, but it ended up being trite and flat (to the point where the author felt somehow compelled to explain to us how the culmination of the story was Hamlet). I thought the prose was flowery, sure, but beautiful and sonorous — and by the end of the book I was dreading every ten-minute bridge description, every melodramatic assault of what Agnes was thinking and feeling.

And so little happened, and we knew all of it was going to happen! This book had nothing new to tell us or teach us.

★★