"Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood

Hag-Seed is the second Shakespeare retold book I've read from Hogarth Shakespeare. Written by Margaret Atwood, it's the retelling of The Tempest. I was unfamiliar with The Tempest prior to reading this novel.

Stage director Felix suffers a betrayal right as he's preparing his masterpiece, The Tempest, for stage. With his prestigious position stolen from him, he becomes a recluse, nearly off-the-grid. He assumes a new identity and employment as a theater director for a prison program, where he finally plots his revenge against those who wronged him.

Suffering also from the loss of his young daughter many years ago, Felix is a bit of a wild card--you're never sure just how far he'll go. He goes through his days imagining what his daughter would be doing at every moment, talking with her, and pretending she is there with him.Parallels between The Tempest play he's directing with inmates and the revenge plot he's crafted are  very clear, even down to some of the people in Felix's life having similar names to Shakespeare's plays.

My favorite part of the book was the inmates. They were distinct and showed growth through the novel; they loved the theater program and thus made the it the very best they could.

The play within a novel where basically the plot of the play actually happens provided a refreshing way to get to know the play, without completely giving everything away. After the epilogue, there is a brief plot summary of the original play, which fills in any gaps and ties the two stories fully together. I now feel very familiar with the story of the play.

I wasn't as invested in the whole revenge plot as the rest of the novel, which really slowed down my reading. Obviously the book needed conflict of some kind, and it was also paralleling The Tempest, but especially since it had been 12 years, I kind of just wanted it to be over with.

I received this book for free, but was not required to write a positive review.

To Review: "Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood

Next up to review is Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. It's a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, published by Hogarth Shakespeare.

I've read another novel from the same publisher that was the retelling of The Winter's Tale, which was called The Gap of Time, by Jeanette Winterson. Though I wasn't a huge fan of that retelling, I do like Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood, so perhaps this one will be a better fit!

I've read Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake (with The Blind Assassin sitting in my to-be-read pile!). Looking forward to getting into Hag-Seed and letting you know how it is!

Review: "The Gap of Time" by Jeanette Winterson

The Gap of Time begins with a brief synopsis of the play it's based on, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Since I haven't read the play, it was helpful as an introduction so that I could later appreciate aspects of the cover that specifically related, or deviated, from the original.

The Gap of Time is set in modern day, where Leo becomes obsessed with the delusion that his wife, MiMi, is having an affair with his friend (and former lover) Xeno. He's exponential paranoia leads him the belief that the child MiMi is pregnant with is not his own. Refusing to believe their protests or the wisdom of a paternity test, after the child's birth Leo hires a friend to take his baby daughter to Xeno. The baby, Perdita, never makes it to Xeno, and instead adopted by a single father and his son. Perdita has a few possessions from her past, but otherwise is unaware of what led to her adoption. After meeting and befriending Xeno's son Zel, slowly the truth comes out and all parties are taken back through the years to uncover what really happened.

From the description of The Winter's Tale at the beginning, it seems as though the plot line stayed pretty much the same. The names are all similar, or the same, which would make it easy for someone familiar with the Shakespeare version to pick up.

I mostly enjoyed The Gap of Time, but there were some areas where it felt like the theme was forced. For example, Xeno is clearly stuck in the past as he creates a video game to play out a mix of memories and dreams. Every time it was mentioned it seemed to be trying to remind us that the book is set in modern time (video game) and that there was more to the Leo and Xeno, Xeno and MiMi relationship but all of it was in the past and therefore untouchable, but also unforgettable.

The theme was also a little overdone in the more lyric passages, such as "the early separation of earth-moon, hundreds of millions of years before life of any kind happened on earth, had no reason to be the grand motif of our imagination. But it is" (122). For someone looking for a philosophical take on time in novel form, perhaps it would go over smoother, but to me it just got in the way of the narrative and took me out of the moment.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "The Panopticon" by Jenni Fagan

The Panopticon is the first novel by Scottish poet Jenni Fagan.  Anais, the fifteen year-old-protagonist is thoroughly a hard to love chronic offender who has found herself in the Panopticon, the 23rd home she's gone through. Despite the young lead, I wouldn't classify this as a YA read due to extensive vulgarity, heavy drug use, and subject matter including prostitution, rape, suicide, and murder.

The novel started slowly, with Anais being introduced to her a new home. However, once the other occupants of the home are fully introduced, I became much more invested and soon was hanging on every page waiting to hear good news for the fates of the young outcasts.

Anais has a theory: She's part of an experiment, born out of a test tube, raised under a constant watchful eye, and put to the test time and time again just to suit the whims of this experiment.  It's a broad fear that appears throughout the novel at random intervals. The idea of a constant fear of being watched is ingrained in the novel's title (Panopticon), but it isn't really developed as much as I would've liked for the intriguing premise.

The use of dialect was very distracting for me during the first third of the book, before the translations became second nature. "Tae" for "to" was simple enough, but words like "umnay" and "urnay" took me awhile to switch over to "am not" and "are not". It's important for a novel to stay true to the vocabulary of the characters, but I didn't like the imposition of a dialect that could've been described instead of written out throughout the entire novel.

There are also some great supplemental materials at the end of the novel: discussion questions, a list of inspirations, and even a playlist to go along with the story.

All in all, the story line was interesting, I was invested in the characters even if I didn't like them, but the dialect, profuse cussing, and lack of development of the "experiment" really brought the book down. 

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

To Review: "The Panopticon" by Jenni Fagan

Next on my list to read and review is The Panoptican, the first novel by Jenni Fagan, which arrived earlier this week from Blogging for Books.

I'm an experiment. I always have been. It's a given, a liberty, a fact. They watch me. Not just in school or social-work reviews, court or police cells-they watch everywhere.
                                      - Preface

Intrigued? Look for my review in the coming weeks!