{"id":5416,"date":"2017-11-07T09:55:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T09:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=5416"},"modified":"2017-11-07T14:27:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T14:27:49","slug":"hag-seed-margaret-atwood-vintage-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=5416","title":{"rendered":"Hag-seed, Margaret Atwood, Vintage 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s hard to imagine a writer of Margaret Atwood\u2019s stature and excess of imagination restricting herself to the confines of someone else\u2019s creation, but this is what \u2013 in theory \u2013 Atwood has done in Hag-seed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As one of a number of writers commissioned to produce a work based on a Shakespeare play to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death, she has selected The Tempest<\/em> \u2013 one that sits squarely in the group of problem plays.<\/p>\n

But it proves to be no straitjacket at all. Her deposed Prospero is theatre director Felix, who makes the mistake of ignoring the mundanities of workplace politics to immerse himself in his craft. Lesser men oust him when he is at his lowest ebb personally following the deaths of his wife and child, but on the eve of his greatest theatrical dramatic triumph, his production of The Tempest.<\/em><\/p>\n

His self-incarceration in a primitive hovel some way out of town gives him the space to confront his grief, but also to nurture his revenge. It is slow in coming \u2013 twelve years \u2013 but when it does it is spectacular. Felix\u2019s rehabilitation takes the form of a job teaching literacy in a nearby prison, which he promptly turns into a job putting on Shakespeare productions with the inmates, with such startling results that he becomes a fixture. And it is there that his enemies are delivered to him, and his once-impotent plotting against them begins to spring teeth.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to be familiar with The Tempest<\/em> to enjoy the book \u2013 with its satirical humour, ruefully imperfect hero, sudden stabs of pathos, and the final inexorable march towards revenge, it can stand on its own two feet \u2013 but there are delights along the way if you are. Just as Gonzalo in the original enrages the traitors with his idle musings on how he would govern his own island, Lonnie, the only person to have shown Felix a shred of pity, irritates his ruthless companions by expatiating on how he would improve correctional services.<\/p>\n

Atwood reworks some of the speeches in the play as explosive raps developed by the enthusiastic inmates, who, responding to Felix\u2019s subtle mix of explanation, interpretation, and recasting in modern frames of reference, have picked up the text and run with it. And the exploration of what happens to the characters after the end of the play demonstrates the vigour of a close reading of the lines alive to the social context of the play as well as its internal logic.<\/p>\n

On a parallel track, Felix\u2019s revenge is crafted through expert \u2013 on might say criminally expert \u2013 use of digital technology, whisking Prospero\u2019s magic from the \u2018twangling\u2019 isle to the gritty realities of a Canadian correctional facility.<\/p>\n

I am happy to report that it is not only Felix and the inmates who are rehabilitated in their various ways. Atwood rescues Miranda from her usual \u2018wide-eyed girl in a nightie\u2019 manifestation and transforms her into an athletic and resourceful woman, well able to defend herself, manage an irascible father and a predatory slave \u2013 and run a tight cave.<\/p>\n

Atwood\u2019s sly humour is a huge part of the satisfaction of reading the book, whether it\u2019s describing the excesses that Felix\u2019s productions have inflicted on the middle-of-the-road theatregoers of the Makeshiweg festival, capturing the ghastly corporate-speak of the upper echelons of state and national politics, or relishing the creatively macabre options the inmates offer for punishing Prospero\u2019s traitors.<\/p>\n

Most satisfying of all is the way Atwood presents the sheer enjoyment of \u2018putting on a show\u2019, where all differences of age, race, opportunity and education are obliterated in a joint undertaking and creativity becomes boundless. With all the subtlety of Prospero\u2019s art Atwood has concocted a page-turner that is at once comedy of manners, \u2018let\u2019s do the show right here\u2019 romp, accessible lit. crit., and a moving tale of redemption for (nearly) all involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R-E-V-I-E-W: Revenge bytes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,68,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-book-review","category-living-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5416"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5425,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions\/5425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}