Sex with Shakespeare : Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love
Author(s): Jillian Keenan
A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spanking
When it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide her—until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeare’s language flowing through her blood for the first time. In Sex with Shakespeare, she tells the story of how the Bard’s plays helped her embrace her unusual sexual identity and find a love story of her own.
Four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, Keenan’s smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With fourteen of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality—from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist—like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of “privacy.” The Taming of the Shrew goes inside the secret world of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, while King Lear exposes the ill-fated king as a possible sexual predator. Moving through the canon, Keenan makes it abundantly clear that literature is a conversation. In Sex with Shakespeare, words are love.
As Keenan wanders the world in search of connection, from desert dictatorships to urban islands to disputed territories, Shakespeare goes with her —and provokes complex, surprising, and wildly important conversations about sexuality, consent, and the secrets that simmer beneath our surfaces.
Review(s):
“An English major’s dream!…You may have studied Shakespeare in high school, but it’s almost guaranteed that your literary analysis wasn’t anything like this…The connection to Shakespeare is a fascinating foil for Keenan’s life…[Her] writing is clear, relatable, and steady, even when conveying painful events in her past.”
“Visceral, funny, and perceptive, this startling and very personal take on Shakespeare is genuinely revealing—not only about the author, but even more about the plays. Keenan notices and responds to things that criticism on the whole ignores. An enjoyable and impressive book.”
“Moving and funny…Keenan’s original takes on Shakespeare are just as fascinating and insightful as her takes on sex, lust, and love. Fans (kinky or not) of Shakespeare will love reading this book, and anyone directing Shakespeare should be required to read it.”
“Explicit and often harrowing…Keenan writes, she says, so others like her will not have to feel alone…By demonstrating the elasticity with which sexual undertones in Shakespeare can be read, she makes a case for a more expansive definition of sexual identity.”
“Keenan’s excellent writing and humor make this a book enjoyable for fetishists and vanillas alike— especially if you like Shakespeare… A powerful tool in the growing arsenal of identity acceptance…This is an important book to have been written and to be read.”
“Keenan’s intimate conversations with Shakespeare offer new and often startling insights into his plays. They are also deeply moving, and deeply courageous, challenging us to rethink sexuality in fundamental ways.”
“Keenan serves up a smart, sexy cocktail of a memoir that is one part spanking fetish, another part Shakespeare, and goes down like a dirty martini that leaves the reader both shaken and stirred.”
“A raunchy memoir revealing a visceral connection to the Bard.”
“Jillian Keenan reveals how the revered playwright helped her come to terms with her sexual identity. Full of humor, her memoir explores the lessons she learned from the Bard, ranging from fetish to communication to love.”
“Insightful and refreshing…Keenan’s mix of fearless and emotionally resonant personal revelations, cheeky (no pun intended) good humor, and deep literary knowledge make Sex with Shakespeare highly original and engaging.”
ISBN: 9780062378729