Revenge, thy name is Hag-seed

I make no secret of the fact that I am a fan of Margaret Atwood. But I will admit to not loving everything she has written.

I did, however, love Hag-seed, and have recommended it to several people.

Publisher’s Summary: William Shakespeare’s The Tempest retold as Hag-Seed

Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds.

Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.

After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It’s magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?

Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.

 

Later this year, when I teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream,  we will do a lesson on Shakespearean cursing, but it will not be as funny as the chapter in Hag-seed when the inmates look for, and decide upon, which curses they will be allowed to use in class, or how their curses punctuate the story. It is a beautiful story of revenge.

Hag-seed  is one of the books in The Hogarth Shakespeare Project in which modern authors retell Shakespearean plays. Hag-seed  was the first book in the project that I read because I hadn’t known about the project before. Now, I plan in reading others.