Chick Lit and the Bard

Chick-lit light with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and some love advice from the Bard thrown in, that’s Elizabeth the First Wife (Prospect Park, $15.95). Elizabeth Lancaster is a single community college instructor with a sexy, famous ex-husband and a Skype flirtation with a political campaigner. Author Lian Dolan (you might know her name from the Satellite Sisters podcast that’s been on NPR and ABC radio) tosses in a Nobel Laureate father, a need for home redecorating and a dog to pretty much guarantee something that everyone can relate to.

The book is a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and it’s not on that list because it’s a deep exploration of the themes of love and betrayal in Shakespeare; it’s there because it is a sweet exploration of why a smart single lady decides to change up her life. The word light keeps coming to mind — the pastel cover of the book, the chick-lit tone, the bright and sunny portrayal of Ashland’s Shakespeare Festival — this is the kind of book you read if you don’t want to think too hard, but you can’t deal with straight-up stupid when it comes to your summer reading.

The Shakespeare references, as Elizabeth works on in a book of her own that uses some of the Bard’s archetypal couples to give love advice, are sometimes a little labored but also amusing, and the non-Shakespearean types in Dolan’s readership won’t feel talked down to. And Elizabeth the First Wife drops in moments of humor as well as truly Oregon moments: “But despite those accusations and the rancor over a recent city ordinance outlawing public drumming, the mix of locals and tourists, new money and old hippies had clearly reached a happy détente at Paddy’s.”

If the light reading that is Elizabeth the First Wife whets your appetite for a trip to OSF, you may well be in luck — the publisher is offering a contest through June 30 in which readers can win a long weekend in Ashland with a hotel stay, dinner and tickets to the Aug. 9 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; go to http://wkly.ws/1i2 to enter.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

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