Romeo & Juliet
A Modern Day Sequel
James Edwards
Reviewd by Amy Lignor
Dear Readers: We all
know the ending to Shakespeare’s tragedy, but this novel takes another
step – a
giant leap of faith, really. We begin when
Romeo Montague, who died for his Juliet, travels through the darkness
of lose-love
and awakens in present day Hawaii. Almost immediately he meets a Zen Master who
is a lot like Pat Morita was in the Karate Kid.
He is there to help Romeo through his struggle and teach him
about the
modern world. The Master is actually a
funny character and does very well beginning this “suspend your
disbelief”
plotline. As the years pass, Romeo
travels to New York and then back to Hawaii
to live. He is thirty-two years old,
sells software out of his home to support himself, and has become a Zen
Buddhist.
Our lovely Juliet now goes by the name of Emma
Gallant
(Emilie is what her friends call her), and she is an eighteen year old
actress. She is the “next big thing,” “the
up and coming star.” All the girls look
up to her and all the men want to be with her.
Her young, naive heart is taken at the beginning of our story,
by Johnny
Perfection, a 40-year-old actor who was once the most beloved bad boy
in Hollywood
but now finds his body sagging in all the wrong places.
He is also happily married with children and
wants to keep his affair with Emma Gallant as quiet as possible. This way, no reporter can knock him off his
“heroic” pedestal.
Romeo & Juliet (I mean, Emilie) meet in the modern-day
dating world of the Yahoo internet chat rooms.
Of course, they fall madly in love and realize through the Zen
power of the
computer that they are, in fact, soul mates.
(You’ll have to excuse or enjoy, depending on who you are, the
hot and
heavy cyber sessions that are had throughout the novel between these
two
star-crossed lovers).
Past lives are told through Romeo’s hours of meditation that
include a time when Juliet was an Egyptian Pharaoh’s daughter and, in
the lost
city of Atlantis, where Juliet and Romeo were married but, of course,
didn’t
survive. For me, this story was a lot
like seeing the movie Romeo + Juliet. It
was a modern-day attempt at a script that should really be left alone. I found Romeo completely unromantic in just
about every way and was disgusted more than anything else during their
conversations over the internet that he was in his thirties and Juliet
was
still only a teenager. If someone were
to meet this guy in a chat room, he’d have polyester pants and live
with his
mother. Unfortunately, Juliet (Emilie)
is pretty much a simpering twit through most of the dialogue and you
wonder why
Romeo would be interested in the first place.
There are two bright sides:
The use of Shakespearian names throughout the book (i.e.,
Emilie’s
agents are the Capulet Agency) are well-done; and the descriptions of
the
locales – especially the Hawaiian island – are lovely.
You can imagine yourself walking hand in hand
on a beach with the man you love. Only
problem is – you’d make sure that it WASN’T the Romeo in this book.