I, Iago

To be perfectly honest, I had not thought about the tragedy of Othello since I turned in my final paper my senior year of high school about Iago (the villain of the story). Shakespeare was largely a relic of high school English classes.... until today, when I picked up Nicole Galland's stunning novel, I, Iago. The story takes place from the point of view of Shakespeare's most dastardly villain, Iago. I don't know exactly what drew me to this story - I haven't read Shakespeare since turning in that paper, and I don't know what I quite expected. The pull quote on the cover from Geraldine Brooks called the novel an "astonishing work of imaginative empathy," so I knew the point was to feel sympathy for the villainous Iago. And Galland does just that; over the course of the story, she reveals a different nature of Iago than the villain of the play. She gives him a fleshed out backstory, beginning from his childhood as the fifth son of a Venetian merchant, through his military training and career guided by a desire to do what is "honest," and an overwhelming love for his wife, Emilia. The themes of jealousy run through his story, like through the original Othello (in Act 3 of the play, Iago warns Othello, "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on"). Galland's novel is split into two parts: "before" and "after." The "before" section is Iago's life until Shakespeare's narrative starts, and "after" is the narrative of Othello. The entire tale is wholly from the first person point of view of Iago, without the Shakespearean dialogue. I found the story highly readable, and it makes me want to re-read Othello itself (and god, does it make me want to re-write that paper I wrote on Iago in high school). I am a sucker for a good re-telling (I don't know how many times I've read Anita Diamant's The Red Tent) and I absolutely love seeing authors taking stories that are such an entrenched part of the literary canon and exploring new depths to the material. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the  transformation of helplessly in love Iago to one who would murder the object of his love... it was not quite convincing enough (hence the 4 stars instead of five). But I really enjoyed the story nonetheless. Galland chooses a quote from Arthur Miller's The Crucible to start her story: "an hour before the devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven," thus setting her readers up for a tale of a wondrous fall. And wondrous it was... Rating: ★★★★