Hag-seed : The tempest retold

Title:

Author:

Atwood, Margaret, 1939- author.

Added Author:

Adaptation of (work): Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Tempest

Personal Author:

Atwood, Margaret, 1939- author.

ISBN:

9780804141291

Edition:

First United States edition.

Physical Description:

xiii, 301 pages ; 21 cm

Series:

Hogarth Shakespeare

Hogarth Shakespeare.

Abstract:

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 brewing revenge. After 12 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?

Subject Term:

Daughters -- Death -- Fiction.

Prison theater -- Fiction.

Revenge -- Fiction.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
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Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The beloved author of The Handmaid's Tale reimagines Shakespeare's final, great play, The Tempest, in a gripping and emotionally rich novel of passion and revenge.

"A marvel of gorgeous yet economical prose, in the service of a story that's utterly heartbreaking yet pierced by humor, with a plot that retains considerable subtlety even as the original's back story falls neatly into place."-- The New York Times Book Review

Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, but it will also 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, which, after twelve years, arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison.

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.

Praise for Hag-Seed

"What makes the book thrilling, and hugely pleasurable, is how closely Atwood hews to Shakespeare even as she casts her own potent charms, rap-composition included. . . . Part Shakespeare, part Atwood, Hag-Seed is a most delicate monster--and that's 'delicate' in the 17th-century sense. It's delightful." -- Boston Globe

"Atwood has designed an ingenious doubling of the plot of The Tempest : Felix, the usurped director, finds himself cast by circumstances as a real-life version of Prospero, the usurped Duke. If you know the play well, these echoes grow stronger when Felix decides to exact his revenge by conjuring up a new version of The Tempest designed to overwhelm his enemies." -- Washington Post

"A funny and heartwarming tale of revenge and redemption . . . Hag-Seed is a remarkable contribution to the canon. "--Bustle

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Despite its title, this novelization of The Tempest explores the perspective not of Caliban, the enslaved witchs son, but of Prospero, his magician master.The latest in The Hogarth Press series of Shakespeare retellings is Atwood's (The Heart Goes Last, 2015, etc.) take on tyranny, betrayal, and art. In dystopias such as The Handmaids Tale (1985), the feminist master of literary science fiction explored the fate of the oppressed, but here she focuses instead on the power of an artist to reimagine his fate. Her Prospero, the actor/impresario Felix Phillips, has spent too many years ignoring office politics so he can concentrate on the things that really mattered, such as his perceptive script notes and his cutting-edge lighting schemes and the exact timing of the showers of glitter confetti of which he has made such genius use. As a result, hes been ousted as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival by his scheming second-in-command, Tony Price (Antonio), and the Chair of the Board, Lonnie Gordon (Gonzalo). Fleeing the scene of his betrayal, Felix changes his name to Mr. Duke and finds refuge in the Literacy Through Literature program at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute, a job he agrees to take only if hes allowed to direct the inmates in Shakespeare plays. There he plots revenge, which unfolds when Tony, now Minister of Heritage in the Canadian government, along with Lonnie and assorted other dignitaries, makes a photo-op visit to see Felixs production ofwhat else?The Tempest. Once Felix has his enemies isolated in his dominion, he directs his spritesthe inmate actorsto bewitch, drug, and humiliate them, exposing their treachery. The plots self-referential layers recall Prosperos famous air, thin air speech about actors. But despite this clever construction and a few genuinely moving moments involving Felixs dead daughter, Miranda, who died of meningitis as a toddler and whose spirit hovers through the story Ariel-fashion, the bulk of the novel can feel like spending some 300 pages in a high school English class. The inmate-actors seem more like puppets than people; oddly, the most forgettable is the eponymous Caliban-counterpart. Deliberate and carefully built, this novel rarely pulls off true theaters magic of transforming glitter confetti into fairy dust. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.