Anne Fortier approached her new novel, “Juliet,” with the diligence of a graduate student working on her thesis.
Her modern-day retelling of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” jumps back and forth between Siena, Italy (a town in Tuscany), in the 1300s and the present day, when Fortier’s protagonist, 20-something Julie Jacobs, inherits a key to a safety deposit box in Italy. Her aunt left most of her estate to Julie’s twin sister, Janice. It turns out Julie has a connection to the woman who inspired Shakespeare’s Juliet.
Fortier wanted all the details of medieval Siena to be as accurate as possible, so she pored over books, architectural plans and old documents with her mother, who is based in Siena and speaks fluent Italian.
She estimates that only 4 percent of the research made it into her book.
“Juliet” is available in more than 30 countries, including the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. (Some 61,000 copies have been printed in the US. The book was released in late August.)
The Associated Press: You didn’t have a book deal when you were writing “Juliet.” Were you nervous about finding a publisher?
Fortier: To me it is so obvious this would be a phenomenal story to write. There’s this Shakespeare recognition all over the world. Mom and I started speaking in code when we were on the phone with each other. Her letters were all in code. We don’t say “Romeo and Juliet” to each other. We were so afraid to open The New York Times and there would be a “Romeo and Juliet” new novel by, you know, Dan Brown.
Did you keep checking the Internet to see if someone else had a book coming out?
Fortier: Whenever I would go to Amazon, I’d be almost looking through my fingers I was so afraid somebody would have written the book before me … I went and checked all the time!
“Juliet” is an international hit. Is it interesting to see the various book covers?
It’s fantastic and it’s so funny because some countries make it look like some kind of highly intellectual pursuit. Almost like a book I would not buy! Some countries … it’s like, my god, this looks like a bodice-ripper (laughs), and so different countries have just gotten completely different things out of it. This is all about them knowing their audience and being able to pitch the story to their audience.
Will you write a sequel?
If this really sells, I’m going to try to write a sequel to it. I left so many open ends deliberately because I would love to write a sequel. Of course we can’t disturb Julie’s happy ending but it would have to be Janice’s story, right? We’ll see how it goes.
