Burgess has taken the few facts we have about the life of Shakespeare and spun them into a most engaging story, centered around his relationship with the "dark lady" of the sonnets. Here we have a Shakespeare who lives and loves and always aspires to a higher social standing that he, the son of a modest glover from Stratford, will never achieve. But no matter -- as Burgess makes clear, he is the genius whose work will outlive all of the mere nobility of his time.
Among other things, Burgess speculates that Shakespeare bequeathed his "second best" bed to his wife because he caught her there with his younger brother. Burgess also elaborates on a theory put forth by other Shakespearean experts -- that Will contracted syphillis and spent the last years of his life disease-ridden as a result. Did it all happen exactly this way? Who knows? But you'll enjoy speculating along with the author.
Burgess, who was always a clever man with words himself, writes in the conversational tone and flow that one most likely would have heard in Elizabethan England. This might seem tiresome to the casual reader, but it helps establish an atmosphere that feels right. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the biographical background to Shakespeare's plays (or anyone with an interest in the Bard at all).
Most of the novel shows WS trying to figure out what kind of love he is after. His notions of love come from Plato's "Symposium" - will it be common, physical lust, or contemplation of absolute beauty leading to his best poetic and dramatic works? The relationships that the novel explores these questions with are with the youthful noble Henry Wriothesly and the exotic, colonial Fatima.
Burgess delights in wordplay throughout the novel, using for the most part, the language of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets in the narration and dialogue. Unlike "Shakespeare in Love" Burgess's novel does not build around any specific text, instead making his works almost marginal to the drama of Shakespeare's fictional biography. Burgess presents Shakespeare's works as the results and expressions of a desperate life.
Burgess augments Shakespeare's story with an almost post-colonial historical setting. With Fatima allegedly from the Indies, and a backdrop of English oppression of the Irish, "Nothing Like The Sun" complicates Shakespeare's historical moment. Class struggles, plagues, and political sterility also mark the temporal setting as the novel moves from the country (Stratford) to the coast (Bristol) to the capital (London).
Reading "Nothing Like The Sun" was a welcome experience for me, having only ever read Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" before. The writing style takes a little getting used to, but that is the price you pay for art. I highly recommend it.