Shockingly funny and exquisitely tender, More Strange Than True by C.J Spataro is a romance novel perfectly balanced between comedy and magic to create an elixir of compelling emotion. The novel is a semi-retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, inserting characters from the play into the love life of a millennial woman. Spataro’s novel explores themes of personhood and what it means to love and shows us how to conquer the human experience of letting go with appreciation for what’s been lost. The witty prose and delightfully strange premise will keep readers wrapped around its finger, with surprising turns and intriguing characters it’s impossible not to be enraptured by.
Set in present-day Philadelphia, the story features multiple locations around the city, from Temple University to Rittenhouse Park. These details enrich the story and reading experience and offer a vivid glimpse at what the City of Brotherly Love is like for those who live here.
The story starts with environmental scientist Jewell Jamieson, who has just buried her father, waiting for her boyfriend at a friend’s cozy bar in South Philly. To make an already bad day worse, Jewell receives a breakup text from her boyfriend. She makes her way home in a state of drunk melancholy to her loving poodle, named Oberon after the character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
At home, Jewell has dinner and laments her loneliness, before dramatically reciting Shakespeare to Oberon. She goes on about how she wishes could just date her dog, rather than the wonderful men of Philadelphia she’s used to dealing with. With no clue what she’s started, Jewell falls soundly asleep, Oberon beside her.
It’s this wish that sets the rest of the plot off, with the story turning into a wonderful whirlwind of magic and love triangles. Fairies materialize in the room, transforming Oberon into a human while Jewell sleeps. The wish is completed without much fanfare, though Oberon is not as unaware of the fairies’ presence as they might believe. Another character from Shakespeare’s tale, fairy queen Titania begins to find herself drawn to Oberon, as though they were lovers in a past life. She has a loneliness to her that she declines to confront, as she has ruled in the fairy realm with only her sisters beside her for years. Meeting Oberon ignites something surprising in her: the desire for another person. While introduced for the sake of fulfilling Jewell’s happiness, Titania begins to actualize her own. Ignoring her sisters’ advice to detach, she returns to the human world with plans to win Oberon. It’s here that we begin to understand Titania not as a tool for completing Jewell’s wish, but as a fully realized character with desires.
Throughout the story, personhood and desire are further explored. Written in a close third-person perspective, readers are left to piece together what Oberon himself is feeling as he adjusts to becoming a human in both mind and body. There is an obvious frustration with the way he used to live becoming totally inaccessible to him. Through this adjustment Jewell supports him, despite her own confusion over his transformation.
As he is hurtled into adjusting to human life, a new theme emerges of Oberon learning to exist beyond his devotion to Jewell. This happens in several stages, as he first learns how to function within a human body without her help and eventually begins going to work. He can no longer spend his days simply waiting for her to return home. Jewell, on the other hand, must reckon with how her relationship to Oberon develops beyond a dependency and into true romantic connection. So used to being his caregiver, she must shift roles to that of a true partner, something she does with hesitancy. Often, she tries to control him in major ways for the sake of perceived safety, as though they are still in an owner/pet relationship.
While the start of the romance between them feels sudden, the characters do fall into each other easily, already familiar and confident in the commitment they have to each other. Spataro’s dialogue weaves subtle affection into their dynamic.
“‘…Will you still come home smelling like French fries?’
‘Probably,’ he laughed. ‘But at least I will be home in time to make you dinner.’”
As the story eases toward its end, those around Oberon and Jewell start to question whether what they have is love, or if Oberon feels indebted to her, still loyal as the dog he once was. While Oberon doesn’t outright agree, he doesn’t outright deny this either, scared to live untethered from Jewell. Jewell must reckon with the weight of her loneliness and fear of connection, before finally understanding that ownership is not the same as love.
Short, strange and sweet, More Strange Than True will break your heart and sew it back together again.
You can find more about C.J. Spataro and her novel here.
More Strange Than True
C.J. Spataro
Sagging Meniscus Press
June 24th, 2024
274 pages
Ronan Brinkley is a third-year student at Drexel pursuing a BA in English and a concentration in writing. They enjoy horror movies, and long walks on the beach. In their free time, they like writing poetry, bothering their friends, and critiquing shoddy films. They dream of someday having a mug cabinet.