No Boys Play Here
NO BOYS PLAY HERE (William Collins, January 2021) is the second part of a coming of age story and tells of a teenage girl in search of her lost father and uncle through the characters and plots of Shakespeare’s plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV. Illustrated with drawings by Arizona Smith, the story unfolds as a series of strange theatrical scenes in the mind of a young girl intent on finding the missing men in her history. Part English family saga, part Medieval and Tudor history learned from school, NO BOYS PLAY HERE is a re-imagining of English myth and folklore from the point of view of a serving boy — Francis, a girl in disguise — who waits upon the king. Moving back and forth between family life and Shakespearean scenes, Sally asks some hard questions about how it is some children grow up poor and what happens to make them so.
For bicycle deliveries around Oxford, contact Blackwell’s on 01865 792792
Reviews for NO BOYS PLAY HERE:
“It’s part of her technique that she never resorts to jargon, but her family conditions are all too recognisable after months of lockdown: isolation in the midst of overcrowding, undernourishment, unemployment, domestic violence, bullying, abuse. ‘Poverty,’ she writes, produces stunted children . . . `No Boys Play Here is written prismatically, breaking up time and flashing a kinetic sequence of songs, nursery rhymes, and quotations, especially from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV. Bayley’s prose recalls Poor Tom’s scattershot patter in King Lear, Edgar’s play-acting. As a lonely child she is fired by mysterious phrases and strange punning (of Falstaff: ‘He frets like a gummed velvet;’ when Falstaff is tricked by Prince Hal: ‘Thou lies, thou art not coated, thou art uncolted.’) Falstaff’s name for a chamber pot, ‘Jordan’, is another of the magic words that can trick reality into seeming different, as when a soused Uncle James wants her to help him unbutton. Like Prince Hal, Bayley is studying people ‘like a strange tongue.’ Bayley’s adeptness with mobile identities, class as well as gender, gives her unexpected sympathies - by the close of the book, she is understanding even of the wretched males (‘men are just boys in disguise’). Bayley’s contribution to this ever-expanding genre is her distinctive approach to then self, the auto at the heart of autobiography, when compared to the portraiture methods of, say, Philip Roth (in his Zuckerman novels) or Annie Ernaux . . . By contrast, Bayley progresses jaggedly and disrupts her voice not by uniting herself with a chorus of others under the first-person plural, but by projecting her thoughts through the mouths of others - watching out for the masks they put on, listening for the voices they affect.’ (Marina Warner, The London Review of Books), read the full review here
“No Boys Play Here glitters with many such humble Shakespearean words, which gain a whole new lustre through their appropriation by the needy child . . . it should be made into a play.” - Claire Armistead, The Guardian, read the full interview here.
"She is so wonderfully skilled at capturing the way life is lived half in and half outside a young person's head" - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, 5 stars out of 5, read the full review here.
“Bayley’s book is an extended soliloquy, requiring and amply repaying an exercise of the reader’s imagination… Her favourite writer was Dylan Thomas, and Bayley’s prose style, freely associative, cryptically allusive evocatively resonant, has affinities with his” - Sir Stanley Wells, TLS, read the full review here.
“The sentences are tight and crisp and she has this child’s perspective, but it’s such a fantastic idea to try to intersect memoir, family history, literary criticism and Shakespeare.” - Jackie Kay, The Guardian, read the full review in Jackie Kay's cultural highlights here.
Review by literary critic John Mitchinson on Monocle on Culture: Looking Ahead to 2021 where he describes NO BOYS PLAY HERE as his top book to look forward to this year; and an interview with Julia Merican of Oxford Review of Books.
No Boys Play Here Drawings by Arizona Smith:
To see a larger selection of the artwork for NO BOYS PLAY HERE created by self-taught artist, Arizona Smith, click the button below. Drawings are high quality giclée prints available for purchase.
The London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project
I’ve been supporting the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project in their endeavours to bring Shakespeare’s language to prisoners as a way of helping them structure their thoughts and feelings. More information can be found on the project website.
Below can be found two short poems (‘witslings’) written by two different prisoners whilst undertaking an LSW exercise. The first is by Simon, a British young offender; the other by Glynn in a UK adult female prison. The first line of each is drawn from Shakespeare. Together, they champion the iambic heart of their own Bards. The performer is Dame Harriet Walter.
‘Why Shakespeare?’ was written by Darren at HMP Brixton, under the original title, ‘Cold Turkey’. The young men were asked to write in answer to the question ‘Why Shakespeare?’. This sonnet was Darren's response, performed here by Sir Ian McKellen.
Abdiel is a fine wordsmith; a man of soul - and a voice. When all else has been stripped away the spirit of Shakespeare remains our birthright. LSW has been privileged to have several verses made for us by him. Truth to Power is among these as is the haunting prologue to our production of Blacking Iago as was celebrated by audiences both in the prison and throughout Great Britain on its national tour. The performer is Lynn Farleigh.
Content Link Block