McCullough, Joy. Enter the Body.
Dutton, 03/2023. 336pp. Fiction.
Trade $18.99. 978-0-593-40675-5.
GRADES 9 – 12. OUTSTANDING.
Enter the Body opens in the trap room of a theater, the bodies of Shakespeare’s murdered, beaten, and
strangled heroines falling around the reader, who immediately feels a claustrophobic sense of doom and
déjà vu. A brief, authorial narrative transitions into short, powerful blank verse poems as Juliet, Ophelia, 9
and Cordelia, among others, begin to share and connect their stories and violent ends, and to comfort
and confront one another. Though some of the connecting text can be didactic at times, the overall
impression of the book is a chorus of anger and awakening that compels the reader to examine their
own experience of Shakespeare, as well as their own views of women and violence. The voices and verse
forms are complex and distinctive, the individual heroines compelling, and the theatrical directions are
unique in making the reader feel the additional rhythm of theatrical performance overlaying the
personal narratives and re-imaginings of Shakespeare’s well-known dramas.
Lesley Mandros Bell—Unaffiliated