Boy

by Nicole Galland

Boy is a delight, a novel about two young people whose childhood friendship suddenly turns into something more breathlessly compelling. Alexander Cooke, “Sander,” a player in the theatre company for which Shakespeare writes, will soon outgrow the female roles that have made him a celebrity. Joan Buckler is a merchant’s daughter who, visiting customers with her father, has become acquainted with a gentleman whose botanical experiments with grafting fruit trees and growing tomatoes give her the opportunity to exercise her intellect and curiosity. Ill-suited to the constricted life of a typical woman in Elizabethan England, she yearns for more. Shakespeare’s gender-bending plays, in which Sander plays women masquerading as men, inspire an idea that could give Joan more access to the life of the mind she craves.

Though Joan is fictional, a real Alexander Cooke existed, a boy player in the theatre company that performed in the Globe of Shakespeare’s time. Little is known about his life otherwise, but much is known about people he may well have encountered. During the time period in which the novel is set, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, was desperately trying to mend his shattered love affair with Queen Elizabeth I. Francis Bacon was developing his theory of inductive reasoning, a philosophical pursuit which may have been more important to him on an intellectual level than his role as a legal adviser and counsel to the queen.

Sander and Joan soon find themselves in hot water as they try various risky strategies to craft satisfying lives for themselves. At first, the worst they risk is embarrassment and scandal. But the risk increases as Sander—hoping for a more secure professional position that would make it possible for him to marry Joan—becomes entangled in Essex’s doomed struggle to regain the queen’s favor. Boy starts as an absorbing romp and becomes a nail-biting page-turner, all the more so because the characters are so well drawn they feel utterly real and lovable. (2025, 339 pages including an afterword separating fact from fiction)