Hag-Seed: A Novel (Hogarth Shakespeare) (edição: 2017)

I received a copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Quick note---if you haven’t read or seen The Tempest recently, or if you want a quick refresher, or certainly if you haven’t read or seen the play—skip straight to the end and read the synopsis of the Shakespeare play. It isn’t necessary but I wish I had known about it and done it because the last time I read The Tempest was my Sophomore year in college (1982) so to say I was foggy on the plot would be a huge understatement. All I remembered was there was an island in there somewhere. I was about as prepared as Trump for a presidential debate.

This is the second in the Hogarth series that I have read and Ms. Atwood takes the Shakespeare connection quite seriously. Rather than writing a tale that follows, more or less, a play from the Bard and gives it a modern twist---Hag-Seed dives deep into the play itself, creating a multi-layer literary feast.

A play within a play all contained in a novel about both plays. This one is deep. Starting at the center we have a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which has special importance for the director, as you will see. The Tempest is all about prisons (there are 9 in the play—12 if you add the novel) and it is appropriate that the play itself is to be performed in a prison by prisoners. Interesting considering that the players in Shakespeare’s play are also imprisoned, by geography, by politics, by circumstances of their birth, or by prejudice—as are, in different ways, the characters in this novel. Some are of their own choosing and grief can be as confining as iron bars. Moving outward we watch the creation of the production and the imprint each of the various players has on the play and its director. Our learned director has problems of his own—and not just how to smuggle in props into a prison. He is a very damaged man, alone in a self-imposed isolation and shackled by grief, this play has significance beyond merely the theatrical accomplishment. To him putting on this play is about validation, vindication, and even revenge…

Most if not all of the novel’s characters have counter-parts in Shakespeare’s play and the sheer brilliance of Ms. Atwood’s intricate plotting is astounding. I have found myself noticing new levels days after reading as I kept returning to the story in my mind. Of special delight to anyone who is a fan of Shakespeare are the final few chapters, which take the action of the play beyond where Shakespeare left it off as well as insightful discussion by the prisoners (the players) and novel variations on a 400 year old play, which even today finds new interpretations and relevance.

5 stars. Wow…just wow. ( )

(8.5) This modern retelling of The Tempest is cleverly rendered.
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. It will 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. 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?

For the uninitiated like myself,the author provides a summary of The Tempest at the close of the book and the reader is able to easily recognise the various characters represented in modern times in her book. An enjoyable and at times amusing tale. ( )

This book is one of the Hogarth Shakespeare series – a set of modern retellings of some of Shakespeare’s plays, by various acclaimed authors. Hag-Seed is a modern re-telling of The Tempest, and in the capable hands of Margaret Atwood, it is a triumph.

Felix Phillips is artistic director at the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, but is usurped by his traitorous assistant Tony, just as Felix is planning a staging of The Tempest. After hiding away and licking his wounds, Felix takes up a job teaching Shakespeare in a prison, and staging plays with the prisoners as the cast, but all the time he is plotting his revenge upon Tony and others who treated him unfairly.

It’s not necessary to know The Tempest to enjoy this book – you can definitely read it as a novel in its own right – but it is interesting to see how the two stories run parallel to each other. I actually think that if you were studying The Tempest, this book might help you understand it (because The Tempest is one of the most beautiful but also one of the most difficult to understand of Shakespeare’s plays in my very humble opinion).

As always with Atwood, the writing flows beautifully and there is dark humour sprinkled throughout. I loved reading about the prisoners and who taking part in the play came to mean so much to them. It’s a quick and fairly undemanding read, and I throughout enjoyed it. ( )

Having thoroughly enjoyed Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, a retelling of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” I was looking forward to Margaret Atwood’s masterful hand in Hag-Seed, though a little apprehensive, as well, as “The Tempest” is such a difficult play. The setting of the novel is the world of theater arts, and the protagonist (?) is Felix Phillips, the artistic director of Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. When Felix gets the axe, he goes off the deep end, hides in an abandoned cabin and has imaginary conversations with his deceased daughter, whom he nicknames “Miranda.” When he is approached with an opportunity to teach literacy at a local men’s prison, Felix begins to hatch a plot for revenge against those who scorned him, and we begin to see the plot ties to Shakespeare’s play.

I enjoyed the scenes with the inmates as they interact with each other and the process they go through to learn and enact the play. Atwood’s novel makes Shakespeare’s play more approachable, and I especially liked the scene where each of the inmate-actors describes what they imagine happened to their characters after the play ended.

The revenge scene, when it finally arrives seems a bit too pat, almost juvenile in its description. Prospero wins! The villains are foiled (with drugged grapes)! The whole story is supposed to culminate in that scene, but it is less than satisfying. But perhaps that is the point. Revenge may be initially satisfying, but ultimately not as emotionally satisfying as are forgiveness and moving on. Felix was ousted from the theatre, but the life he built in his new career directing the prison plays is better than the one he had before, with better relationships. And, after his betrayal, he was able to live an imaginary life with his Miranda until he healed enough to let her go. Initially, Felix and his Miranda were trapped, just as Prospero was trapped on the island, unless the audience “set him free.”

Ms. Atwood has stepped out of her usual dystopian worlds into a very creative, entertaining and enlightening one in Hag-Seed. I will recommend this to my more discerning patrons who are willing to take the time to enjoy the parallels between the play and the novel. I do feel putting the plot summary of the play at the beginning rather than the end would be helpful to the reader.


 
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This book captures the best of Atwood: inventive, sly, and full of the humanity that makes us who we are. I love Shakespeare , and Atwood gives him a fine nod while remaining true to her writerly voice. Adding to my favorites for 2016. ( )