My Father Had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale

by Grace Tiffany

Book Overview

In this wonderfully inventive novel, Grace Tiffany weaves fact with fiction to bring Judith Shakespeare to vibrant life. Through Judith's eyes, we glimpse the world of her famous playwright father-... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425196380
• ISBN13: 9780425196380
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Judith Shakespeare

I love books about Shakespearean times. This was a very good story with nice description and good character development. I really enjoyed it! Hope you do too!

A Good Read

Here is a wonderfully written story about a very little known character--Judith Shakespeare. I know about her father, and now I feel I know something about her. Tiffany's fluid, funny, authentic language brings Judith's story to life and adds a new dimension to her famous father. This book delivers everything a good historical novel should...I want more!

I paid the ultimate compliment to Ms. Tiffany?s book

I was near the end of the book but was unable to finish that evening, so I GOT UP EARLY to finish reading it before leaving for work! It's got to be darn good to get me up early. This is a beautifully written tale with the wonderful quality of being spare and full at the same time. It has a "I can't wait to find out what happens" pace like an adventure story, but the adventure is Judith's life as she discovers her passion as an actor, woman, friend, and, finally, a daughter. Her personality is distinctly revealed. Judith is whole, complex, believable, as well as highly likeable, and her life and this book do not follow the beaten path.

"Mom liked the book & so do I" says 14 year old daughter

I saw my mom reading this book and she just wouldn't stop. So when she finished, I picked it up to have a try. It's a good thing it's summer vacation because I spent the next two days reading about Judith. I really like her. The author brought that time and place alive with excellent descriptions of day to day life in the country and cities of England. I could feel Judith's inquisitiveness, excitement, confusion, fear, love, determination and courage. Anna Oehser

Couldn't put it down

From the first page, the vivid character of Judith Shakespeare comes alive. I couldn't put the book down. Tiffany is steeped in Shakespeare's idiom, and it shows. For Judith's narrative, she has fashioned a language that unfailingly projects a sense of the heroine's historical remoteness while it yet remains clear to the contemporary reader. This is no small feat! The Publisher's Weekly review above is wrong about the language: "post-play," employs a Latinate construction in common use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (email me for examples), and I couldn't find the word "stylized" anywhere (I read the review before I read the book), leaving me to wonder whether the reviewer and I read the same book. (She also gave the story away, which is just plain irresponsible.) In any case, I found Judith Shakespeare's language a lyrical delight, the story engaging and no more implausible than most of Shakespeare's plays, and I loved the way Judith's character developed emotionally and spiritually. In fact, despite the market-conscious tone surrounding yet another "female-relative-of-a-famous-guy" book, I found the story and the character to be refreshingly non-PC. Anti-PC, even.