Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

Penguin sent me a copy of Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth last year. I was pleased as I’m a Nesbo fan but I remember puzzling over the need or necessity for these prestigious writers to use someone else’s story to create one of their own. Are they all so short of new ideas?! I mean, did Shakespeare do such a bad job?! 

For anyone interested I include a link to the Nesbo review.

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2017/12/macbeth-jo-nesbo.html

But after having read the Nesbo I think I ‘got it’. I read a little more about the Hogarth Project, the need to keep Shakespeare fresh, the challenge, the honour, almost of tackling the Bard! So I was delighted to procure this copy of Margaret Atwood’s Shakespearean adventure from Nudge books. This is a modern interpretation of The Tempest. I love the play for its weirdness as opposed to the history plays, the tragedies and comedies. It’s a resourceful and creative rendition that uses a theatrical theme, a play within a play idea, to illustrate a delightful revenge story. How better to explore the themes of forgiveness and repentance than setting your tale in a prison? 

‘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, revenge and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.’

Something I learnt from the Jo Nesbo book was to put aside any preconceived expectations of how the writer might tackle the story. Forget the author almost? No, not quite. I couldn’t do that. This is Margaret Atwood after all!! And as might be expected  it was resplendent with the Atwood wit and subtlety. 

The story was a delight and bordering on genius almost. For if you were to try and ascertain, stereotypically,  who in society would be least likely to be pro Shakespeare inmates of a correctional facility might be amongst your guesses. In so doing Margaret Atwood, in one fell swoop, has made it patently clear that Shakespeare is and should be accessible to all. 

The main character, Felix, emerges as a better teacher than actor possibly for what he achieves with his motley crew of players is wonderful. From initially motivating them and guiding them in this unique performance of the Tempest to their conclusions and ideas about what happened to the characters after the play was extremely moving. 

The revenge denouement is ingenious. I suppose it could be seen as a little farfetched but this is fiction it's a story  and The Tempest isn't a convincing bastion of reality!! It is possibly sugar coated if you’re looking for realism. From time to time you do ask if a group of criminals would behave as cooperatively as this. But I think the point is to offer a potential, the blueprint of a possibility. It’s one of the most uplifting prison stories I’ve ever read to be sure. And I wouldn’t mind betting that those unfamiliar with the Tempest might well seek out a copy or a performance after reading this book.

Which leads me neatly to considering how readers who are unfamiliar with the play do respond to the story compared to those who do know the play. If you know the story in the play you know what's going to happen in the book to a degree which possibly allows you to luxuriate in Ms.Atwood’s writing. She has wound the watch of her wit and struck!! But if not then the unfolding of the Tempest story with its diverse characters and its magical overtones will delight. 

On a more metaphysical level the book explores notions of prisoners and imprisonment that exist beyond the confines of prison walls. The things that makes us all prisoners in some ways. Yet the book never strikes as being heavy. It’s possibly one of Atwood’s lighter treatments? But it never loses touch with either Shakespeare or the contemporary world in which it is set. I would see that as more than filling the brief for this series of books.

And of Margaret Atwood I say - “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!” 

😉😉

RETRO REVIEWING: Barracuda - Christos Tsiolkas

The fourth in the Retro Reviewing series is this book published in January 2014.

I confess I have had a copy of The Slap sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read for a while now. I do believe that wait is over.

And the motivation is from just finishing my  copy of Barracuda, Mr. Tsiolkas (does anyone know how to pronounce the name?) new novel.

Reviewers have not always been kind to this writer so I started the book with no real expectations. But I finished it with total admiration.

I thought it was an excellent novel. You could be forgiven for believing it to be a tale of an adolescent kid throwing a strop because he didn’t win a race. But it is so much more than that.

This is a tour de force of adolescent angst, anger and aggression and the painful journey to being a whole person again.

I suspect the book also has much to say about the situation of sports in Australia but I am British and I can’t usefully comment on that. There is little of the sports scholarship thing in this country and I’m not even sure how it works. 

But that is only part of the story and in the bigger picture just a small part. 

Danny the boy is not very appealing; Dan the man breaks our hearts. To have a dream well within your grasp and to lose that dream forever is not something to get over easily. To deal with it with criminal activity is reprehensible to say the least. But to understand why you’ve gone wrong and where you’ve gone wrong is one thing and to turn it around to enrich the lives of those you care about and may have hurt in the past is something else. 

I suppose you could see this as a coming of age story, a painful coming but a satisfactory and hopeful ending made this a meaningful read for me.

I loved it. So, slap me.

RETRO REVIEWING: Anyush - Martine Madden

The third of my Retro Review series:  this book, abut the plight of the people of Armenia, was published in May 2014.

I have to look at this novel from two perspectives, one as a work of a fiction and two as a vehicle for the history that was being fictionalised. If this novel did anything at all for me it exposed my ignorance. And I felt ashamed. Novels like this are important regardless of how well they are written or constructed because they give voice to a series of events that might not be widely known. 

I was ignorant of the atrocities perpetrated on the Armenian people. And I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Martine Madden (and Real Readers) for enlightening me. This book made me cry, not for the love story contained within but for the suffering and cruelty inflicted on the Armenian people and after completing this book I have researched Armin Wegners photographs. 

As to the novel itself I suppose it is not the best-written book I have ever read and there are aspects of the narrative that I felt I’d read before in terms of plot construction and so some of the outcomes were not surprising or dynamic. The main characters are pretty solid for the most part but there are some who are there just to further the plot and don’t come across as real as Anyush herself and Jahan. I enjoyed the inclusion of Dr. Stewart’s diaries and letters as they enabled a focus on the fact that this book was not merely a love story. 

To say I loved this book is wrong but it moved me immensely and it will stay with me for a very long time.

RETRO REVIEWING: Coal Creek - Alex Miller

The second of my retro reviews, this book was first published in May 2014 .

'When his father dies, Bobby Blue decides to leave the Mount Hay cattle station where they worked side by side and take a job in town as the new constable's offsider. Daniel, the constable, his wife Esme and their two girls, Irie and Miriam, are new to the western country and, struggling to understand its inhabitants, invite Bobby to stay in a hut on their property where he is educated alongside their daughters.

But there's a simmering tension, building quietly and strongly, beneath the overt goodwill. And when first Irie then Miriam become involved in a dispute that threatens violence, there's an abrupt and ruthless change in attitude from Daniel and Esme towards Bobby.

When tragedy strikes at Coal Creek the true nature of the perceived friendship is laid bare with consequences that will haunt Bobby for decades.'

 I am not one to judge a book by its cover. In most cases I don’t even notice the cover, as I’m too eager to see what’s inside. But for some reason I did look at the cover of this novel sent to me by Real Readers and immediately Brokeback Mountain came into my head, the short story not the film. And whilst I am not offering a comparison between this writer and Annie Proulx there was a similar ambience cast throughout as I read this.

I enjoyed it very much. I found it a well-constructed novel with clearly defined characters. Initially I found the style of writing a little stilted until I came to realise that the narrative was the protagonist’s written account of events. It was a simple enough story but rendered complex by the acknowledgement of the intricacies of human emotion and behaviour. There was a very strong feeling of how different the events might have been if different courses of action had been taken. And the particular courses of actions that unfolded were mostly all fuelled by human emotion not necessarily understanding the true situation. Except for Bobby who seems extraordinarily perceptive and knowing about people, animals and their place within the natural order of things and what happens when that natural order is contaminated.

The ending did have a little of the ‘happy ever afters’ in it but as a reader it gave me a satisfactory conclusion to the book. It wasn’t sugar coated but, like the entire novel, stated as fact of what happened.

I can see this making a good movie if there’s anyone out there looking for some material with potential?

RETRO REVIEWING: Passionate Love Affair With A Total Stranger - Lucy Robinson

I was reviewing books long before I actually started a blog and whilst rummaging around my hard drive I found a few that have never seen the light of blog! So I thought I'd do a 'Retro Reviewing' feature............

This is chick lit, not a genre I’d choose but the only way to know I wouldn’t choose it is to read from the genre. So when Real Readers sent me a copy I was up for the challenge! And I can’t say that I enjoyed it but equally I didn’t NOT enjoy it. For me it is a genre that relies solely on the telling of a story. You kinda know from the start what is going to happen and as such there is an inevitability and predictability that comes with such work. This novel is no exception. It became fairly obvious what the ultimate outcome would be it was just a matter of what path the writer and her characters took to achieve it.

This particular novel is competently written for the most part, there is no attempt to make it ‘literary’ and I do respect that. I suppose the only way to go beyond the chick lit bracket is to do what David Nicholls did in ‘One Day’ with one particular outcome that was so unexpected and atypical of the genre. (Read it; I don’t do spoilers). 

And I don’t want to give anything away for those people who surely will enjoy this story. Bridget Jones is alluded to in the narrative, which I thought was a clever move because there are comparisons invited and by making the allusion clearly deflects any negative criticism.

If this were a film you’d wait for it to come out on DVD rather than have the urge to see it on the big screen.

But if you are a lover of chick lit you will enjoy this book immensely and I am sure it will do well for Lucy Robinson.

The Italian Teacher - Tom Rachman

The synchronicity of all things; this last couple of months has seen no less than three art themed novels come my way - Elizabeth Lowry’s superb The Bellini Madonna, Maria Hummel’s gripping Still Lives and now this exquisite, Costa shortlisted, novel from Tom Rachman, The Italian Teacher.

The Italian Teacher of the title is Charlie ‘Pinch’ Bavinsky son of celebrated artist Bear Bavinsky, Bear is apparently successful and whose principled approach to his work includes the destruction of anything he isn’t happy with, a cavalier attitude almost to galleries and collectors and a disdain for critics. But he leaps off the page as a larger than life character, very aptly named Bear. Bear Bavinsky is an artist but I kept thinking that he is also an asshole! To his wives and his children. But is that because he is driven by a force that is more than himself? The creative streak can be a cruel mistress or master in some circumstances. In part Bear is aware for he says.’ What is art but decisions?”, and one of his wives acknowledges that ‘You need to be selfish as an artist.’ Well Bear is surely that.

And so is Bear the main character in the novel or is it his son? Poor Pinch, your heart bleeds for him. He so badly seeks the approval and affection of his mercurial father that it becomes his life’s work almost. The story examines the relationship between father and son and raises questions regarding nature and nurture. It’s a well observed piece of writing full of perception and understanding of what does or doesn’t drive people. Towards the end the summations of Bear and his life read like an actual biography, so much so, I almost googled him!!

The portrayal of creativity dominating domestic life and family is interesting. The ofttimes selfishness of creativity and the driving force it provokes in an individual will possibly resonate with ‘creators’. 

Bear says, ’Not everyone is an artist. But for those of us that are, it’s war. …… Total war, or you’re dead from the start. There is a reward though. ….. We get to live forever.’

And the permanence of art and its potential endurance is a concept that is balanced by the impermanence and transience of life, in relationships and the ability to destroy. Bear’s proclivity to destroy his art when he isn’t happy with it seems to mirror a similar desire with his relationships and progeny although the destruction of these is not necessarily physical. But ‘Even if a man’s important, he doesn’t get to live by different rules.’, says Bird, one of Bear’s other children damaged by her self absorbed father. 

And if the book is a story about a boy and his father it is also a tale of art across the decades. Does this book expose how fickle the art world can be? A character, journalist Connor Thomas and his ‘before and after’ attitude to the ‘new’ paintings of Bavinsky highlights this possibility. And Pinch’s actions, which I shall not divulge as it would be such a spoiler, contribute to this idea. As Victor Petros, a gallery owner, says ’Success in art is fifty percent timing, fifty per cent geography. The rest is talent.” A little harsh and cynical I fear but is there any truth in it?

Rachman’s novel seems to me to deal with notions of how painting as an art form seems to affect the individual in a different way from art as the written word. A painting hits you immediately and it’s emotional. Your head catches up with it later! Text hits your head first and your heart after. (Maybe both at the same time if it’s a good book?!). So a book about art, again, a good one anyway, is almost bound to be an explosion for the reader! The words become visual almost, you see them as well as read them if that makes sense. Maybe you have to actually read a book as textually visual as this one to grasp what I mean? Because it is quite an explosion!! Where brushstrokes can be paint heavy and bold, they can also be delicate and pastel light and if words can be seen in a similar vein then this book exemplifies that perfectly.

It’s a solid piece of writing, witty in places, moving in others, thought provoking throughout, the work of a talented author. My first Tom Rachman and even as I write this I can hear my TBR shelves shift themselves about to make more room………

My thanks to Ana Sampson McLaughlin at riverrun for a copy of this absorbing novel.

Me Mam. Me Dad. ME. - Malcolm Duffy BLOG TOUR

I'm delighted to be participating in the Blog Tour for Malcolm Duffy's Me Mam. Me Dad. ME

A little blurb to begin -

'Things I learned when I was fourteen;
Never keep secrets from your girlfriend.
Never get into a scrap with a bigger lad.
Never play football with a black ball when its dark.
And never let anyone hurt your mam.
Ever.

My thoughts on this book -

A Young Adult book read by an Old Adult. But also, written by an Old Adult! It’s an interesting equation. I often wonder if I’m qualified to comment effectively on a book not aimed at my generation? My argument is always that I’ve never grown up! But for a writer of YA fiction the burden is more onerous. In order to appeal to your intended audience you simply have to get it right. Has Malcolm Duffy, in his debut novel, done that? Read on and I’ll let you know what I think. 

Danny is a Geordie lad living with his Mum. And I will admit as a lover of the Newcastle accent, I read this book with that in mind the whole way through. Mad as that may seem it added to the book’s appeal for me. Danny is fourteen when the book begins. And if there was ever a temptation to portray him as a stereotypical, generalised character it was avoided from the off. Mr. Duffy knows exactly how to lure the younger reader in with an opening paragraph intended to make you sit up and take notice. And I’m not going to quote it here !! I don’t  do spoilers so you’ll have to get a copy of the book to see. If I was a fourteen year old boy, I think it would pique my interest. 

But having grabbed your reader and lured them in, can you sustain that? The writing style is that of a short, sharp sentence attack. It serves two purposes. It makes the story accessible for even the more reluctant readers and it assists in defining Danny’s character. That’s how he thinks. There are no long drawn out descriptions. The book is more about people and situations than any attempt to offer pastoral, literary extravagances. I liked the use of language in the book. There was no attempt to descend into undesirable language yet there  was enough contemporary vernacular to render Danny believable.

Well illustrated too is the dilemma any of us, however young or old we might be, can experience  when faced with a situation of untenable gravity. I hope it’s not a spoiler to state that domestic violence is a major theme here but possibly that’s something a reader needs to know before reading the book? There are no attempts to offer a solution, it’s is rather a way of illustrating one lad’s way of dealing with this unenviable situation and the ramifications well intended actions might have. 

I found Danny real and endearing from the start. The other characters are lesser players. Danny takes the stage and keeps it. That’s not to say they aren’t important but they are slightly less defined. They have their parts to play and they play them well. But Danny is the star. I thought the writer struck a good balance between the self awareness of a burgeoning adolescent and the vulnerability of someone trying to make sense of the adult world they are beginning to enter. In fact it is book of balances. The subject matter is hard hitting, distressing and relevant yet the book has a warmth, some comic moments and a hint of optimism running through it, so important for younger readers and anyone who might be affected by what happens in the book. But there’s little sugar coating. Unpleasant things happen and this book isn’t afraid to detail them. But it’s also a book about love, on a number of levels, romantic teenage, romantic adult love, filial love, destructive love, reluctant love and how love can motivate the most unlikely of actions. 

I enjoyed the book immensely. I think it has plenty of appeal for its intended readers. My thanks to Jade Gwilliam at Head of Zeus not only for the opportunity to read this book but to allow me yo be a part of the Blog Tour celebrating the paperback publication.

Malcolm Duffy is a new writer to me so I scavenged his website to learn a little of the man.

Malcolm Duffy was born  Newcastle upon Tyne where he spent his childhood. Later he came down south. He worked in advertising and garnered in visual mediums -  TV, cinema and radio as well as wards for copy. 

He was Creative Director of Comic Relief for three years. and it was whilst working there that he conceived the idea of writing this book.  He is married with two daughters. He is now working on a second novel. 

Please don't just take my word for this captivating book. Read what my fellow bloggers have to say about it.