Retellings of classics are a very popular genre among historical fiction novels. I was so thrilled to find a book that narrates the Romeo and Juliet story from the nurse's point of view. This story begins with Angelica her husband Pietro who are peasants living in fourteenth century and Verona.

Although they are poor, they love each other dearly and have a wonderful life raising six boys until the plague claims the lives of all of their children. They think they will never have the chance to bear other children until one night when Angelica experiences sudden abdominal pains and she is surprised to discover that she is in labor. After days of grueling labor Angelica gives birth to a baby girl, whom she is told is stillborn.

One thing I will warn the reader about is that Romeo himself does not make an appearance until the end of the book. Most of the story deals with Juliet's life as a child and how Angelica becomes her nurse. Pietro, in order to give Angelica some physical and emotional comfort after her baby girl dies, finds her a job as a wet nurse for an upper class family who had a daughter born on the same day as Angelica's. The entire first part of JULIET'S NURSE describes the first three years of Juliet's life, and develops the strong bond that nurse and child share.

I thought that the diction and word choice in JULIET'S NURSE was unusual. The book is written in modern, not Shakespearean, English but the author inserts some Shakespearean language randomly into the text anyway. It found it very distracting to read phrases like "by my troth" or words like "perchance." The last third of the novel, when the traditional story of Romeo and Juliet emerges, is particularly full of such Shakespearean language.

JULIET'S NURSE contains a lot of details about life in fourteenth century Italy. Lois Loveen describes the Cappelletti palace, the clothes of the upper class and the rich banquets that lords use to entertain. We are also given a glimpse of what it would have looked like to walk around the city of Verona and visit its markets places and worship in its basilica.

JULIET'S NURSE did help me to better imagine the setting of Shakespeare's Verona. If you desire another, very different perspective of the Romeo and Juliet story, then JULIET'S NURSE is definitely worth giving a try.