Boy
Sander Cooke and Joan Buckler, best friends since childhood, have watched one another grow towards their dreams. Sander, a popular boy player in the Chamberlain’s Men theatre company, is the toast of Elizabethan London. Despite the limitations of her gender, science-minded Joan has quietly built a network of botanists, apothecaries, and natural philosophers who aren’t afraid of a young woman’s curiosity. But Sander and Joan, on the verge of adulthood, are confronted with new problems as they consider the future, the least of which is the new and confusing feelings they have for one another. As a boy player, Sander plays the leading women’s roles, many written especially for him by William Shakespeare. But the career of a boy player is short, ending when manhood makes their Violas and Juliets less convincing, and Sander is reluctant to leave the safety of his skirts behind. Meanwhile Joan longs to shed hers so that she can more easily move in London’s intellectual circles and undertake scientific work with the eminent philosopher Francis Bacon. Their search for a future that includes their passions—and each other—takes them through the political turmoil of Elizabeth I’s court.
Boy is a sharply-written exploration of love, philosophy, and gender in Elizabethan England. Sander and Joan are both neatly drawn characters, with their own fascinations, foibles, and frustrations. Galland tells their stories through the lens of gender—how each character uses presentations of gender to play a role, how they conform to or subvert gender expectations, and how they find comfort in gendered boxes of their own making. Though Galland writes convincingly of the confusing tangle of young love, stronger still is how she writes of their deep and encouraging friendship. An excellent and engrossing novel, beautifully written.
