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    Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel
    Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel
    Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel
    Ebook351 pages5 hours

    Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel

    By Margaret Atwood

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    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 aTempest 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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 11, 2016
    ISBN9780804141307
    Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel
    Author

    Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood (Ottawa, 1939) es una de las escritoras más prestigiosas del panorama internacional. Autora prolífica traducida a más de cuarenta idiomas, ha practicado todos los géneros literarios. Entre su amplia producción destacan las novelas Por último, el corazón, Alias Grace, El cuento de la criada, Los testamentos, Oryx y Crake, El año del Diluvio, Maddaddam,Ojo de gato y El asesino ciego, la colección de relatos Nueve cuentos malvados y los ensayos Penélope y las doce criadas y Cuestiones candentes, todos ellos publicados por Salamandra. Ha recibido, entre otros, el Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, el Governor General's Award, la Orden de las Artes y las Letras, el Premio Booker (en dos ocasiones), el Premio Montale, el Premio Nelly Sachs, el Premio Giller, el Premio Literario del National Arts Club, el Premio Internacional Franz Kafka y el Premio de la Paz del Gremio de Libreros Alemanes.

    Read more from Margaret Atwood

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    Reviews for Hag-Seed

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    • 4/5

      Sep 17, 2024

      Felix Phillips was once the artistic director of a prestigious Shakespeare festival, before he was betrayed by his assistant and forced out. Now, he lives in a shack in the woods, and his one artistic outlet is teaching Shakespeare to inmates at a nearby prison. He's spent years dwelling on his wrongs and seeking vengeance -- and when his old rival, now an up-and-coming politician, is scheduled to visit the prison and see his upcoming production of The Tempest, he seizes his chance...

      On a surface level, I enjoyed this story, with its morally gray protagonist. I chuckled a bit at the descriptions of some of his productions at the festival, and I do think that Shakespeare productions inside prisons could be an excellent outlet. However, I didn't feel that there was much beyond the surface level. From Atwood, I expected a bit more subtlety, and I didn't find it in this text. While I'd still recommend this to readers who enjoy Shakespeare retellings, I suspect that fans of this author might not be impressed.
    • 4/5

      Sep 12, 2024

      i don't generally support censorship but i do think margaret atwood should be banned from writing rap music ever again - can't believe i have to analyse this like it's a postcolonial work of literary genius. an adequate and lightly enjoyable retelling of the tempest, but certainly one of her weaker works. very clearly a passion project: i think she enjoyed writing it more than anyone will ever enjoy reading it.
    • 5/5

      Aug 4, 2024

      Quite fascinating, both for the account of teaching Shakespeare, and the analysis of The Tempest.
    • 4/5

      Oct 26, 2024

      I listened to this is audiobook format.

      This novel is a play within a play within a novel where a somewhat mentally unstable director longs to take revenge against his adversaries. After a career upset he ends up teaching theater at a prison and stages The Tempest with this motley crew of inmates. Shakespeare references permeate the story in both obvious and more subtle ways. It is a wholly satisfying story, though not standard Atwood fare. I highly recommend it, especially for Shakespeare or theater fans.
    • 4/5

      Feb 18, 2024

      I very much enjoyed this book. I'm not always a fan of revenge stories but the miserable part of the story isn't dwelled on over much, the bulk focusing on the main character's new agenda.

      I'm the sort of reader that likes "brain candy," things like allusions or references to other works, literary devices, etc. This book has plenty, being a retelling of Shakespeare's the Tempest both within the book and as the book. I highly recommend it if you also like that sort of thing.
    • 3/5

      Dec 19, 2023

      This retelling of The Tempest has a brilliant central conceit—an outcast theater director revenges himself not with a tempest, but with The Tempest. The story that follows provides an interesting close reading of Shakespeare's play, but as a novel it failed to coalesce for me.

      Atwood is writing a wacky satire, so implausible plotting and static characters can be forgiven, but the storytelling felt flat. Maybe the constraint of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, with its requirement to stick somewhat closely to the source material, was the problem here. There were good moments, and I always enjoy reading Atwood's clever, accessible prose, but the whole didn't leave much of an impression.
    • 4/5

      Dec 15, 2023

      Margaret Atwood does a great job of recasting The Tempest as both a revenge novel and as a play within a play where the revenge is enacted. Very effective, but, like The Tempest itself, hard to summarize.
    • 4/5

      Nov 25, 2023

      Really fun and enjoyable retelling of The Tempest. Atwood came up with the perfect premise of an ousted director winding up putting on a performance of The Tempest within a prison. All very post-modern and self-referential. It was clear Atwood was having a great time - she tells of the director getting the inmate/actors to analyse the text, inviting us to analyse hers in the same manner. She does a good job of paralleling The Tempest's plot, though that does make for some slightly overly-extended suspension of disbelief here and there — but she gets away with it, given the constraints in which she's working. One minor complaint is that the denouement lacks a little tension, but, still, for anyone who has any fondness for Shakespeare's play, this is very highly recommended. 4.5/5.
    • 5/5

      Jan 24, 2023

      Atwood creates a delightfully book of literary legerdemain in this novel rewrite of Shakespeare’s “Tempest.” Felix Phillips, the protagonist is cunningly portrayed as just manic enough in his thought process to turn his sudden and unexpected dismissal director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival in Ontario from shock to depression into a crafty plot for revenge on those who deposed him. He plays Prospero in the novel putting on the play he’d originally planned a dozen years ago, served cold of course, to capture the conscience of his betrayers. But the real magician is the novel’s author who writes her spells in words that conjur up fast paced plotting with metatheater, ambiguity, and word play to make the whole rewrite of the play both believable and pleasing to her audience.

      Ambiguity is a significant part of the stagecraft of this book. The Makeshiweg Theatre Festival is a recognizable stand in for the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival. But what kind of a word is Makeshiweg? Some have speculated that it’s an indigenous Canadian word for fox, but could it also just be a rushed verbalization of Make a Wish? It’s hard to say for sure. Is Felix mourning the death of his young daughter Miranda so much that he actually thinks her ghost is present, or is he aware that it’s a just an imaginary symptom of grief, even when he thinks she’s whispering in his ear? Is it just the stuff that dreams are made of? Again, the answer is maybe. Would it really be possible to isolate some Canadian Cabinet Ministers away from the rest of play’s audience to work vengeance and blackmail upon them? Whatever you might think about those questions, the response to the book should truly be sustained clapping, a standing ovation, and a cry of “Author!”
    • 4/5

      Oct 31, 2022

      Hag-Seed is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. According to their website, “The Hogarth Shakespeare project sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today”. In Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood takes on a contemporary retelling of The Tempest. A summary of the original characters and plotline is helpfully included in the back of the book for those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s original, and it is recommended to have at least a passing familiarity with it before embarking on Hag-Seed.

      Like Prospero, protagonist and theatre director Felix Phillips is betrayed by trusted colleagues and seeks revenge against the perpetrators. To add to his misery, Felix is still grief-stricken from a personal tragedy. He retreats from society and eventually winds up leading a drama class at a correctional facility. One of their productions is The Tempest, fittingly, a play about various forms of prisons. Felix uses the prison cast to exact his revenge. Atwood cleverly portrays Felix as living out the plot of the original, while also staging a modernized version of the play, with inmates encouraged to re-write dialogue in the style of contemporary rap. In this manner, Atwood employs the “story within a story” format with contemporary tale correlating to the original.

      This retelling mostly succeeds, with a few hiccups along the way. The most memorable parts are the depiction of Felix’s depth of grief through his mental instability in envisioning the spirit of his deceased loved one and the reimagining of the characters of The Tempest into roles the inmates would agree to play. The author’s puppet strings show a little too often, which can be attributed, in part, to the nature of a retelling. The inmates are not explored in any depth and mostly serve as foils for Felix’s revenge. They had potential to add layers to the characterization, which is primarily focused on Felix. The dramatic tension is created in the first three sections, with the fourth left to peter out in imagined outcomes of the characters. Overall, it was clever and succeeds in bringing a classic story into contemporary times, which will hopefully spur those unfamiliar with Shakespeare to find out more about him and his works.
    • 3/5

      Jun 8, 2022

      It's been five years since I read this but I do remember finding it pleasant reading but otherwise underwhelming (for a Margaret Atwood!)
    • 4/5

      Jul 16, 2021

      This was a delightful and charming retelling of The Tempest. I find it hard to separate my feelings about this novel from my feeling about the play, which is my favorite Shakespeare play and has one of my favorite Shakespearean characters, Caliban.
    • 4/5

      Jul 11, 2021

      If you are familiar with the concept of "mise en abyme", you will easily recognize it at work here. It got a bit tedious at the end, and a bit to obvious, still an enjoyable read.
    • 5/5

      Dec 4, 2020

      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.
    • 4/5

      Nov 22, 2020

      An excellent re-imagining of The Tempest, layered in the story. Very readable and light and full of creative insight into The Tempest and its characters. If you have to read the play for school and you read this instead (it even has a great summary of the original at the end) you will ace the unit. I also love the subtle references to Stratford and the blatant inclusion of nearby (real) town of Wilmot. Well done, Ms Atwood!
    • 5/5

      Aug 5, 2020

      This is a contemporary retelling of "The Tempest" and I have to say, it made the original Tempest much easier for me to understand. There was a lot of nuance that I missed when reading the original, which was, admittedly, quite a while ago.

      Felix has been removed from his position as artistic director of the Makeshweg Theatre Festival after being stabbed in the back by his assistant, and decides to in essence remove himself from the world. It is not only the pain of this particular betrayal that causes this self exile - Felix ix also mourning the death of his daughter, Miranda, who died when she was still a toddler. Felix spends quite a bit of his time alone, plotting revenge against those who wronged him, and is finally able to enact said revenge in a very unique way.

      I loved the way Ms. Atwood wove a story of revenge and vindication into a play within a play. Felix takes a job at a prison teaching Literacy through Theatre to the prisoners by having them put on Shakespeare's plays, with their own twists thrown in. When he hears that the very men who betrayed him years ago will be visitors at the prison to see his latest endeavor, he decides that The Tempest would be just the play to allow him to exact his revenge.

      I thought the flow was very smooth throughout the story. The characters were very well developed and fleshed out. The plot was interesting and the pace was quick.

      I thoroughly enjoyed Hag-Seed and always love reading anything by Margaret Atwood. I'm giving this book 5/5 stars and enthusiastically recommend it.

      I received a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion.
    • 4/5

      May 22, 2020

      I have only fell in love with Margaret Atwood in the last year of so, since I read The Heart Goes Last. I also am not a big Shakespeare fan, as I have only read A Midsummer Night's Dream (which I did really like, to be fair). Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood's new book and is her re-telling of the Shakespeare play, The Tempest. Even with my limited knowledge of Shakespeare, I loved Hag-Seed.

      Hag-Seed follows Felix, an artistic director ousted from his theater festival just before he puts on his greatest show yet - The Tempest. Eventually Felix finds a new outlet for his work in the area prison, teaching a literature/theater course to inmates. I love the way Atwood structures the story, moving back and forth and playing with time in a really great way. The story covers a pretty significant span of time - something like 10 years - and yet Atwood brilliantly ties it all together so it doesn't feel like you've really missed out on anything.

      Atwood's writing style and structure is complemented by a fantastic plot and cast of delightful characters. Felix is a strange, flawed, eccentric man who has quirks that just seem right. The men in the prison are neither good nor bad, but simply people trying to survive a theater course and trying to get out. The antagonists of this story are the perfect amount of despicable, and the roles of Prospero and Miranda come to life in the pages. I love the prison setting and the nuances that come with it, and Atwood brings each aspect of the story - the characters, the play, the setting - to life.

      Atwood is no stranger to brilliant writing and Hag-Seed is no different. The highest praise I can give is that I am now interested in actually reading The Tempest, and if a novel can inspire me to read Shakespeare, it is a winner.
    • 5/5

      May 9, 2020

      "Your profanity, thinks Felix, has oft been your whoreson hag-born progenitor of literacy."

      When I learned that Margaret Atwood had written a book for the Hogarth Shakespeare series, I was both thrilled and hesitant to pick it up. I love Atwood’s work. I love Shakespeare. However, there are elements of both authors writing that I can see would react like fire and ice.

      Atwood is one of my go-to authors for strong female characters. Shakespeare does not come immediately to my mind for that purpose. On the other hand, I love Shakespeare’s thoughtful and often sensitive male characters, which in turn is not something I have really found in an Atwood novel. Most of Atwood’s male characters I’ve encountered were horrid human beings. I mean look at Atwood’s Penelopiad (part of the Canongate Myths Series) to see even the most ancient of heroes being taken down a few pegs. Not that I object – I very much enjoyed her modern deconstruction of the classic story, but I do sometimes feel a little sorry for the male characters that cross her path.

      Therefore it is fair to say, I really had some misgivings how Atwood would approach this re-telling of The Tempest, which is packed with men full of ambition, desire, and longings for revenge, and where the only female character, Miranda, is being maneuvered like a chess piece.

      I was wrong.

      Hag-Seed showed that despite their differences, there are also a few things that Shakespeare and Atwood have in common: the ability to come up with a gripping narrative, imaginative ways of explaining the world as they observe it by relating different angles to the unsuspecting reader, a talent for striking a balance between thought-provoking and evocative writing, and best of all an enormous sense of having fun with words.

      Readers who may have been put off Shakespeare by having had to sit through endless recitals of famous lines in school may not remember it but Shakespeare was funny. If nothing else, there are memes and objects out there that still thrive on Shakespeare’s appeal to the sense of fun in people. None more so than the Shakespearean insult kit.

      Atwood, who can also be wickedly funny, has picked up on this, and actually uses it to lighten up the otherwise potentially depressing or even threatening setting of a prison, where we get to await in anticipation how the inmates will put Shakespeare’s own words to a more creative use. I honestly looked forward to the inmates getting to grips with Shakespeare’s The Tempest by using his own swear words:

      “Born to be hanged. A pox o’your throat. Bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog. Whoreson. Insolent noisemaker. Wide-chapp’d rascal. Malignant thing. Blue-eyed hag. Freckled whelp hag-born. Thou earth. Thou tortoise. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself. As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed, With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen, Drop on you both. A south-west blow on ye, And blister you all o’er. Toads, beetles, bats light on you. Filth as thou art. Abhorr’ed slave. The red plague rid you. Hag-seed. All the infections that the sun sucks up, From bogs, fens, flats, fall on – add name here – and make him, By inch-meal a disease. Most scurvy monster. Most perfidious and drunken monster. Moon-calf. Pied ninny. Scurvy patch. A murrain on you. The devil take your fingers. The dropsy drown this fool. Demi-devil. Thing of darkness.”

      Of course, the investigation into Shakespearean swear words was not the only aspect. I loved. I also loved the scene setting and how Atwood re-imagined the isolation of Prospero’s island in the isolation of the prison, how she transferred the play within the play in The Tempest into a play about a play about a play by making it clear from the outset that Shakespeare’s play The Tempest will be focal point of Felix’s (Atwood’s main character’s) ambition.

      I loved how she used the diverse characters to show different interpretations of the original play, and how she transposed issues of colonialism, sexism, privilege, politics, gender issues, and others I haven’t even contemplated yet, from Shakespeare’s work into a modern setting.

      So, to anyone, who rolls their eyes at reading Shakespeare because they have been bored to despair with a few lines of his most famous works, I say pick up a copy of Hag-Seed. It is just about one of the most gripping, thoughtful, and entertaining ways to find out why people are still enthralled by his works.

      “One question. Is ‘shit’ a curse word? Can we use it, or what?” It’s a fine point, thinks Felix. Technically, “shit” might not be considered a curse word as such, only a scatological expression, but he doesn’t want to hear it all the time. Shit this, shitty that, you shit. He could let them vote on it, but what’s the point of being in charge of this motley assemblage if he refuses to take charge? “‘ Shit’ is off bounds,” he says. “Adjust your cursing accordingly.” “‘ Shit’ was okay last year,” says Leggs. “So how come?” “I changed my mind,” says Felix. “I got tired of it. Too much shit is monotonous, and monotony is anti-Shakespeare."
    • 4/5

      Mar 19, 2020

      Margaret Atwood again proving how GOOD she is at her craft. Smart, clever, and pithy but always with a message. Confession, I am not a big Shakespeare fan but I still enjoyed this re-imagining of his tale. I imagine for Shakespeare aficionados, it would be even more of a treat.
    • 5/5

      Nov 28, 2019

      As a huge Shakespeare fan (with The Tempest easily in my top five, let's say top ten, favorites of his plays) and nearly the same sized fan of Margaret Atwood, I was eager to read this one. And she didn't disappoint. The plot cleverly intertwines the narrative of the original play with a modern setting with several layers onto layers (metaphor? symbolism?) to sift through. If you're familiar with the plot of The Tempest there won't be much to surprise you here, but still Atwood's writing and wit are more than enough to satisfy her fans.

      That said, it felt kind of like the product of a writing assignment rather than the inspired creation of a true genius. This shouldn't diminish the end product. It's a solid, if not great, piece of writing. Just kind of felt like, the whole time, Atwood was answering the question of: "What would it be like to re-tell The Tempest in the modern day?" I've read quite a few of Atwood's books. None of them have felt this much like a homework assignment. No doubt the assignment was done by the star pupil, thus light years better than most people could do. But was she handcuffed with an assignment that was beneath her?

      Maybe.
    • 5/5

      Oct 16, 2019

      Beautifully done. Loved this one.
    • 4/5

      Jun 11, 2019

      Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood is the fourth book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. In this series, today’s authors offer their own interpretation of Shakespeare’s classics. In this case, Margaret Atwood tackles The Tempest.

      Felix is the artistic director of a local theater group. After a personal tragedy he delegates much of his work to his protege, Tony. Tony can not be trusted, and arranges for Felix to be fired, and for Tony to take his place. Felix is devastated, and goes into a self imposed exile for many years, until he emerges to teach a class on Shakespeare at the local prison. While putting on the play The Tempest, with his students in the prison, Felix learns that Tony, now a local politician, will be attending the performance with other dignitaries. Felix takes the opportunity to put into motion his plans for revenge.

      I read The Tempest in high school, but really didn’t remember much of the story. But that is ok, because as Felix is teaching his students about the play, he is also teaching the reader. This is one of the things I enjoyed most about the book. It never felt boring, and I liked hearing an analysis of the original play. It helped me to see the parallels between The Tempest and Felix’s story.

      Felix is both a sympathetic character and an unlikable one. His plan for revenge seems a little over the top, but when taken in the context of the play, it makes sense.

      This is a great book, and I am very happy I had the chance to read it. I give it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free review copy of this book.
    • 3/5

      Mar 23, 2019

      Given the fact that I was never a huge fan of The Tempest, I should have known Atwood's modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's classic would leave me unimpressed. There's no disputing that this is a well-written work that introduces a number of intriguing and memorable characters. But I feel compelled to make a clumsy comparison. In my estimation, "Hag-Seed" is like a sandwich made with scrumptious bread. I was captivated by the book's beginning and conclusion. Unfortunately, the stuff in between was downright boring in spots. I almost didn't finish it. I agree with some reviewers who suggest that "Hag-Seed" simply isn't up to Atwood's standards.
    • 4/5

      Feb 27, 2019

      Atwood brings us a modern retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest through the vengeful machinations of the boundary-pushing theater director, Felix. After losing his wife in childbirth, and their beloved daughter Miranda to a sudden illness at age three, Felix throws himself into a challenging production of The Tempest at the prestigious theater where he is entrenched. Entrenched, that is, until he is unceremoniously fired by the board through a coup led by his second-in-command and helped along by a local culture minister. Felix secludes himself in a small cabin with his thoughts of revenge, eventually bringing his artistic talents (under an assumed name) to a literacy-in-prison program in which he teaches Shakespeare to a select group of inmates, leading to the staging of a very popular filmed production each term which is shown throughout the prison complex. When he finds out that the men who betrayed him years ago have risen up in the world of Canadian politics and are going to be visiting the prison, he decides that the prisoners will stage his interrupted version of The Tempest, and he will play Prospero himself.

      As you might imagine, this is really a fun book. Atwood masterfully weaves the structure of a play within a book retelling a play, and her connections back to the original text are both surprising and satisfying. Written in a crisp, fast-moving style, the narrative has time for some careful observation and just enough internal reflection to keep Felix from becoming overpowered by his need for revenge. The various Mirandas also get a little more to do and say than you might expect, and the men in the prison are active contributors to both the staging of the play and the narrative of the story, not mere pawns in Felix's scheme.

      Even if you haven't read The Tempest, or haven't read it in awhile, this is a great read. And if you are a Shakespeare fan, then you should definitely add this to your list.
    • 4/5

      Jul 25, 2018

      Overall, I haven't been too enthusiastic about the Hogarth Shakespeare series, updated novelized versions of some of The Bard's best-known plays, but this one is my favorite. Felix, the long-time artistic director of a Canadian theatre festival, is forced from his position by two greedy underlings and retires to a rather shabby cottage to mourn the loss of his position and the continuing loss of his daughter, Miranda, who died in an accident ten years earlier--and to plot his revenge. He offers to teach a class on Shakespeare at the local penitentiary, eventually putting on performances with a cast of inmates. The novel focuses on his piece de resistance: The Tempest. Atwood's characterizations of the inmates, as well as the 'handles' she gives them (Bent Pencil the embezzler, for example), are amusing, and Felix's interactions with them are the best part of the story. After all, how do you get hardened, incarcerated criminals to agree to play "girls" and "fairies"? The author does a great job of paralleling situations, characters, and themes of Shakespeare's original play. It's pretty impossible to outdo Shakespeare or even to update him successfully, but Atwood has given us a novel that, taken on it's own, is a fun read with the same important messages as the original.
    • 5/5

      Jul 16, 2018

      Brilliant! Works whether you've experienced the original play The Tempest or not before. I have and got a real kick out of this very contemporary adaptation set in a Canadian correctional facility. Hail Margaret Atwood! :-)
    • 3/5

      May 10, 2018

      One learns a lot about "The Tempest" by Shakespeare, otherwise a rather weak story but, as always, very well written. (Translated from Spanish)
    • 5/5

      Apr 29, 2018

      Here's a truly creative (duh, consider the source and the interpreter) take on The Tempest, one of my favorite Shakespeare comedies. Felix, a Canadian avant garde theatrical producer, has been usurped from his throne by an underling right before the opening of the very same play. Haunted by the decade old death of his young daughter Miranda (aha), Felix retreats into a tumbledown shack in the countryside and takes on a position teaching drama at the local prison. The Tempest is uniquely suited for a large cast of unruly men. Atwood takes us inside the vengeful head of Felix and also shows us the creativity of his teaching methods, which have already made grand successes of the Scottish play, Richard III, and Julius Caesar productions. I've read three of the Hogarths, and this is the first where the actual play is performed, rather than the author re-interpreting it as a novel set in modern times. Atwood is spectacular here, so worthy of this tumultuous multi-layered play, adding even more depth of her own. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5

      Apr 24, 2018

      I should start my review by saying I have never read nor seen the Tempest (although I have a soft spot for Return of the Forbidden Planet – the “rock and roll musical” based on the play!). That said although I know I missed some of the more nuanced parallels this story was told in such a way that the play is well explained.

      For me the highlight of the story was the premise of the prison Literacy theatre group. Whilst I am not sure how representative of the prison population the characters that Atwood has drawn are I loved the idea of the class, the exploration of the ideas and the way in which Felix made the works of Shakespeare relevant to the men he was teaching.

      I did not particularly enjoy Felix as I found him a little too bluntly drawn. In the early days he is painted as an extreme yet stereotypical theatre type and his manipulations and obsession with those he blames make him unsympathetic despite his suffering. I am also not sure that having Miranda die when she is a young child was a smart move. Rather than a fully fleshed out foil to Felix we are instead left with a slightly awkward foray into what can either be read as magical realism / mental health issues / ghost story as Felix engages and talks to his daughter who he imagines growing up, complete with teenage temper tantrums, with him.

      I also did not love the Tempest itself, the set up was painful and in the end it seemed almost farcical – complete with a confusing and unnecessary instalove situation.
      In conclusion then I am glad I read it and recognise it was clever and well written but ultimately not one for me.
    • 5/5

      Mar 24, 2018

      In Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood adapts and reinvents Shakespeare’s The Tempest for modern Canada as part of Hogarth’s Shakespeare series in which various plays by the Bard are retold by famous authors. Like Shakespeare’s play, Atwood’s Hag-Seed begins with a man obsessed over his work only to find his deputy betraying him and sending him into exile. In this story, former Makeshiweg Theatre director Felix Phillips takes the place of Prospero. Forced out of his job for his bombastic productions, he retreats into the Canadian countryside, later taking a job teaching theatre as part of a prison literacy program.
      In Atwood's retelling, Anne-Marie Greenland, a dancer who was to have been in one of Felix's plays before his ousting performs the role of Miranda, here falling in love with Frederick O'Nally, the novel's Ferdinand. As for Ariel, Felix's daughter died of illness prior to the events of this novel. In his exile, he imagines her as a spirit to keep him company while he begins thinking of revenge. Any of the prisoners Felix works with plays some form of Caliban, though 8Handz, a blackhat hacker, does most of the work and even wins a reprieve as a result. As for the courtiers, Anthony Price usurped Felix as director of the Makeshiweg Theatre and plays the role of Antonio. Price was backed by Sal O'Nally, the Minister of Heritage and this novel's Sebastian. When Felix begins plotting his revenge, O'Nally has risen to the rank of Minister of Justice and Price took his place as Minister of Heritage. When O'Nally and Sebert Stanley, the Minister of Veterans Affairs and this play's Sebastian, are competing for party leadership, Price positions himself to advance further. Atwood casts Lonnie Gordon, the Chair of Gordon Strategy, as her Gonzalo. He is the only member of the Makeshiweg Theatre board who shows sorrow over Felix's departure.
      For the prison theatrical elements, Atwood draws upon the growing literature of prison memoirs to make the characters believable and avoid stereotyping. She particularly uses ideas from Laura Bates's memoir, Shakespeare Saved My Life, to develop the concept of the prison literacy program. The Makeshiweg Theatre festival has a real world corollary in the Stratford Festival in Ontario. The concept of prisons abounds in this novel, both in Felix's way of convincing his students that The Tempest is worth their time and in Atwood's description of people and their behaviors. While Felix may not live in a cave like Prospero, his ramshackle dwellings and his regimented behavior recall a cloister of sorts. Price, through his treachery, is a prisoner to his own actions and must advance at any cost. And, of course, the Fletcher Correctional Players are all convicted prisoners.
      In Hag-Seed, the Hogarth Shakespeare series continues to delight in its retellings of these famous plays, blending scholarship with entertainment and, particularly through Felix's understanding of the work, demonstrating that Shakespeare's work continues to live in the twenty-first century.

    Book preview

    Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

    MORE PRAISE FOR

    Hag-Seed

    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.

    —New York Times Book Review

    "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, this latest release in the Hogarth Shakespeare project, whose aim it is to retell Shakespeare’s most beloved works through the works of bestselling authors like Anne Tyler and Gillian Flynn, Hag-Seed is a remarkable contribution to the canon."

    —Bustle

    Atwood’s canny remix offers multiple pleasures…[marvel] at the ways she changes, updates, and parallels the play’s magic, grief, vengeance, and showmanship.

    —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    Inventive, heartfelt, and swiftly rendered.

    —Library Journal (starred review)

    Atwood brilliantly pulls off the caper in a short novel that should be assigned to high school students as a hilarious riff on one of Shakespeare’s more mystifying plays. It’s much more than a retelling; it’s an ingenious analysis and critique rolled into one.

    —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

    Margaret Atwood’s modern retelling is an entertaining romp of revenge, redemption.

    —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

    A triumph…The book illuminates the breadth and depth of the whole play. The troupe’s workshops on it fizz with perception as Atwood transmits the pleasurable buzz of exploring a literary masterpiece. There won’t be a more glowing tribute to Shakespeare in his 400th anniversary year.

    —Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

    "The novel shines a thrilling new light on The Tempest’s themes of revenge and forgiveness…as well as making a strong case for art’s ability to ‘set you free’ by helping you understand yourself."

    —Helen Brown, Sunday Telegraph

    Surpassingly brilliant…without question the cleverest ‘neo-Shakespearean novel’ I have ever read…The learning and the critical analysis are worn exceptionally lightly, always subordinated to wit, invention, characterisation and slick twists of plot….Wonderfully ingenious.

    —Jonathan Bate, The Times

    "You don’t need to be a Shakespeare geek like me to enjoy Hag-Seed; it’s a good story, and will introduce you to the play gently, with Felix himself as your guide."

    —NPR

    "Hag-Seed is a treat. It’s a beautifully constructed adaptation, one that stands on its own but is even richer when read against its source—and can, in turn, enrich its source material. It’s playful and thoughtful, and it single-handedly makes a good argument for the value of adapting Shakespeare."

    —Vox

    "Atwood has tremendous fun with Hag-Seed. Those who know the play will especially enjoy her artful treatment of its more poignant storylines. But even someone unfamiliar with Shakespeare will be entertained by this compelling tale of enchantment and second chances, and the rough magic it so delightfully embodies."

    —BookPage

    Readers looking for Atwood’s wit and mastery of language will find it at work here….Atwood more than does justice to the Bard.

    —Chicago Review

    "One needn’t be a Shakespeare fan in order to love this retelling of The Tempest….This book is funny and wonderful. Highly recommended for Shakespeare lovers and those seeking revenge."

    —The Seattle Review

    ALSO BY MARGARET ATWOOD

    NOVELS

    The Edible Woman

    Surfacing

    Lady Oracle

    Life Before Man

    Bodily Harm

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    Cat’s Eye

    The Robber Bride

    Alias Grace

    The Blind Assassin

    Oryx and Crake

    The Penelopiad

    The Year of the Flood

    MaddAddam

    The Heart Goes Last

    SHORT FICTION

    Dancing Girls

    Murder in the Dark

    Bluebeard’s Egg

    Wilderness Tips

    Good Bones and Simple Murders

    The Tent

    Moral Disorder

    Stone Mattress

    POETRY

    Double Persephone

    The Circle Game

    The Animals in That Country

    The Journals of Susanna Moodie

    Procedures for Underground

    Power Politics

    You Are Happy

    Selected Poems: 1965–1975

    Two-Headed Poems

    True Stories

    Interlunar

    Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976–1986

    Morning in the Burned House

    Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965–1995

    The Door

    NONFICTION

    Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

    Days of the Rebels: 1815–1840

    Second Words

    Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

    Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

    Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982–2004

    Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing

    Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983–2005

    Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

    In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

    CHILDREN’S

    Up in the Tree

    Anna’s Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse)

    For the Birds

    Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

    Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes

    Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda

    Wandering Wenda

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

    Copyright © 2016 by O. W. Toad Ltd.

    Reader’s Guide copyright © 2017 by Penguin Random House LLC

    All rights reserved.

    Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

    crownpublishing.com

    HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

    Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Great Britain by Hogarth UK, a division of Random House Group Limited, a Penguin Random House company, London, in 2016.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

    ISBN 9780804141314

    Ebook ISBN 9780804141307

    Cover design and illustration by Oliver Munday

    v4.1_r2

    a

    Contents

    Cover

    Also by Margaret Atwood

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Dedication

    Epigraph

    Prologue: Screening

    I. Dark Backward

    1. Seashore

    2. High Charms

    3. Usurper

    4. Garment

    5. Poor Full Cell

    6. Abysm of Time

    7. Rapt in Secret Studies

    8. Bring the Rabble

    9. Pearl Eyes

    II. A Brave Kingdom

    10. Auspicious Star

    11. Meaner Fellows

    12. Almost Inaccessible

    13. Felix Addresses the Players

    14. First Assignment: Curse Words

    15. Oh You Wonder

    16. Invisible to Every Eyeball Else

    17. The Isle Is Full of Noises

    18. This Island’s Mine

    19. Most Scurvy Monster

    III. These Our Actors

    20. Second Assignment: Prisoners and Jailers

    21. Prospero’s Goblins

    22. The Persons of the Play

    23. Admired Miranda

    24. To the Present Business

    25. Evil Bro Antonio

    26. Quaint Devices

    27. Ignorant of What Thou Art

    28. Hag-Seed

    29. Approach

    IV. Rough Magic

    30. Some Vanity of Mine Art

    31. Bountiful Fortune, Now My Dear Lady

    32. Felix Addresses the Goblins

    33. The Hour’s Now Come

    34. Tempest

    35. Rich and Strange

    36. A Maze Trod

    37. Charms Crack Not

    38. Not a Frown Further

    39. Merrily, Merrily

    V. This Thing of Darkness

    40. Last Assignment

    41. Team Ariel

    42. Team Evil Bro Antonio

    43. Team Miranda

    44. Team Gonzalo

    45. Team Hag-Seed

    46. Our Revels

    47. Now Are Ended

    Epilogue: Set Me Free

    The Tempest: The Original

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    A Reader’s Guide for Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

    Richard Bradshaw, 1944–2007

    Gwendolyn MacEwen, 1941–1987

    Enchanters

    This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well.

    —SIR FRANCIS BACON, On Revenge

    …although there are nice people on the stage, there are some who would make your hair stand on end.

    —CHARLES DICKENS

    Other flowering isles must be

    In the sea of Life and Agony:

    Other spirits float and flee

    O’er that gulf…

    —PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

    Prologue: ScreeningWednesday, March 13, 2013.

    The house lights dim. The audience quiets.

    ON THE BIG FLATSCREEN: Jagged yellow lettering on black:

    THE TEMPEST

    By William Shakespeare

    with

    The Fletcher Correctional Players

    ONSCREEN: A hand-printed sign, held up to the camera by Announcer, wearing a short purple velvet cloak. In his other hand, a quill.

    SIGN: A SUDDEN TEMPEST

    ANNOUNCER: What you’re gonna see, is a storm at sea:

    Winds are howlin’, sailors yowlin’,

    Passengers cursin’ ’em, ’cause it gettin’ worse:

    Gonna hear screams, just like a ba-a-d dream,

    But not all here is what it seem,

    Just sayin’.

    Grins.

    Now we gonna start the playin’.

    He gestures with the quill. Cut to: Thunder and lightning, in funnel cloud, screengrab from the Tornado Channel. Stock shot of ocean waves. Stock shot of rain. Sound of howling wind.

    Camera zooms in on a bathtub-toy sailboat tossing up and down on a blue plastic shower curtain with fish on it, the waves made by hands underneath.

    Closeup of Boatswain in a black knitted tuque. Water is thrown on him from offscreen. He is drenched.

    BOATSWAIN: Fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground! Bestir, bestir!

    Yare! Yare! Beware! Beware!

    Let’s just do it,

    Better get to it,

    Trim the sails,

    Fight the gales,

    Unless you wantin’ to swim with the whales!

    VOICES OFF: We’re all gonna drown!

    BOATSWAIN: Get outta tha’ way! No time for play!

    A bucketful of water hits him in the face.

    VOICES OFF: Listen to me! Listen to me!

    Don’t you know we’re royalty?

    BOATSWAIN: Yare! Yare! The waves don’t care!

    The wind is roarin’, the rain is pourin’,

    All you do is stand and stare!

    VOICES OFF: You’re drunk!

    BOATSWAIN: You’re a idiot!

    VOICES OFF: We’re doomed!

    VOICES OFF: We’re sunk!

    Closeup of Ariel in a blue bathing cap and iridescent ski goggles, blue makeup on the lower half of his face. He’s wearing a translucent plastic raincoat with ladybugs, bees, and butterflies on it. Behind his left shoulder there’s an odd shadow. He laughs soundlessly, points upward with his right hand, which is encased in a blue rubber glove. Lightning flash, thunderclap.

    VOICES OFF: Let’s pray!

    BOATSWAIN: What’s that you say?

    VOICES OFF: We’re goin’ down! We’re gonna drown!

    Ain’t gonna see the King no more!

    Jump offa the ship, swim for the shore!

    Ariel throws his head back and laughs with delight. In each of his blue rubber hands he’s holding a high-powered flashlight, in flicker mode.

    The screen goes black.

    A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: What?

    ANOTHER VOICE: Power’s off.

    ANOTHER VOICE: Must be the blizzard. A line down somewhere.

    Total darkness. Confused noise from outside the room. Yelling. Shots are fired.

    A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: What’s going on?

    VOICES, FROM OUTSIDE THE ROOM: Lockdown! Lockdown!

    A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: Who’s in charge here?

    Three more shots.

    A VOICE, FROM INSIDE THE ROOM: Don’t move! Quiet! Keep your heads down! Stay right where you are.

    Dark Backward1. Seashore Monday, January 7, 2013.

    Felix brushes his teeth. Then he brushes his other teeth, the false ones, and slides them into his mouth. Despite the layer of pink adhesive he’s applied, they don’t fit very well; perhaps his mouth is shrinking. He smiles: the illusion of a smile. Pretense, fakery, but who’s to know?

    Once he would have called his dentist and made an appointment, and the luxurious faux-leather chair would have been his, the concerned face smelling of mint mouthwash, the skilled hands wielding gleaming instruments. Ah yes, I see the problem. No worries, we’ll get that fixed for you. Like taking his car in for a tuneup. He might even have been graced with music on the earphones and a semi-knockout pill.

    But he can’t afford such professional adjustments now. His dental care is low-rent, so he’s at the mercy of his unreliable teeth. Too bad, because that’s all he needs for his upcoming finale: a denture meltdown. Our revelth now have ended. Theeth our actorth…Should that happen, his humiliation would be total; at the thought of it even his lungs blush. If the words are not perfect, the pitch exact, the modulation delicately adjusted, the spell fails. People start to shift in their seats, and cough, and go home at intermission. It’s like death.

    Mi-my-mo-moo, he tells the toothpaste-speckled mirror over the kitchen sink. He lowers his eyebrows, juts out his chin. Then he grins: the grin of a cornered chimpanzee, part anger, part threat, part dejection.

    How he has fallen. How deflated. How reduced. Cobbling together this bare existence, living in a hovel, ignored in a forgotten backwater; whereas Tony, that self-promoting, posturing little shit, gallivants about with the grandees, and swills champagne, and gobbles caviar and larks’ tongues and suckling pigs, and attends galas, and basks in the adoration of his entourage, his flunkies, his toadies…

    Once the toadies of Felix.

    It rankles. It festers. It brews vengefulness. If only…

    Enough. Shoulders straight, he orders his gray reflection. Suck it up. He knows without looking that he’s developing a paunch. Maybe he should get a truss.

    Never mind! Reef in the stomach! There’s work to be done, there are plots to be plotted, there are scams to be scammed, there are villains to be misled! Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth. Testing the tempestuous teapot. She sells seashells by the seashore.

    There. Not a syllable fluffed.

    He can still do it. He’ll pull it off, despite all obstacles. Charm the pants off them at first, not that he’d relish the resulting sight. Wow them with wonder, as he says to his actors. Let’s make magic!

    And let’s shove it down the throat of that devious, twisted bastard, Tony.

    2. High charms

    That devious, twisted bastard, Tony, is Felix’s own fault. Or mostly his fault. Over the past twelve years, he’s often blamed himself. He gave Tony too much scope, he didn’t supervise, he didn’t look over Tony’s nattily suited, padded, pinstriped shoulder. He didn’t pick up on the clues, as anyone with half a brain and two ears might have done. Worse: he’d trusted the evil-hearted, social-clambering, Machiavellian foot-licker. He’d fallen for the act: Let me do this chore for you, delegate that, send me instead. What a fool he’d been.

    His only excuse was that he’d been distracted by grief at that time. He’d recently lost his only child, and in such a terrible way. If only he had, if only he hadn’t, if only he’d been aware…

    No, too painful still. Don’t think about it, he tells himself while doing up the buttons of his shirt. Hold it far back. Pretend it was only a movie.

    Even if that not-to-be-thought-about event hadn’t occurred, he’d most likely still have been ambushed. He’d fallen into the habit of letting Tony run the mundane end of the show, because, after all, Felix was the Artistic Director, as Tony kept reminding him, and he was at the height of his powers, or so they kept saying in the reviews; therefore he ought to concern himself with higher aims.

    And he did concern himself with higher aims. To create the lushest, the most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring, the most inventive, the most numinous theatrical experiences ever. To raise the bar as high as the moon. To forge from every production an experience no one attending it would ever forget. To evoke the collective indrawn breath, the collective sigh; to have the audience leave, after the performance, staggering a little as if drunk. To make the Makeshiweg Festival the standard against which all lesser theatre festivals would be measured.

    These were no mean goals.

    To accomplish them, Felix had pulled together the ablest backup teams he could cajole. He’d hired the best, he’d inspired the best. Or the best he could afford. He’d handpicked the technical gnomes and gremlins, the lighting designers, the sound technicians. He’d headhunted the most admired scenery and costume designers of his day, the ones he could persuade. All of them had to be top of the line, and beyond. If possible.

    So he’d needed money.

    Finding the money had been Tony’s thing. A lesser thing: the money was only a means to an end, the end being transcendence: that had been understood by both of them. Felix the cloud-riding enchanter, Tony the earth-based factotum and gold-grubber. It had seemed an appropriate division of functions, considering their respective talents. As Tony himself had put it, each of them should do what he was good at.

    Idiot, Felix berates himself. He’d understood nothing. As for the height of his powers, the height is always ominous. From the height, there’s nowhere to go but down.

    Tony had been all too eager to liberate Felix from the rituals Felix hated, such as the attending of cocktail functions and the buttering-up of sponsors and patrons, and the hobnobbing with the Board, and the facilitating of grants from the various levels of government, and the writing of effective reports. That way—said Tony—Felix could devote himself to 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 had made such genius use.

    And his directing, of course. Felix had always built in one or two plays a season for himself to direct. Once in a while he would even take the central part, if it was something he’d felt drawn to. Julius Caesar. The tartan king. Lear. Titus Andronicus. Triumphs for him, every one of those roles! And every one of his productions!

    Or triumphs with the critics, though the playgoers and even the patrons had grumbled from time to time. The almost-naked, freely bleeding Lavinia in Titus was too upsettingly graphic, they’d whined; though, as Felix had pointed out, more than justified by the text. Why did Pericles have to be staged with spaceships and extraterrestrials instead of sailing ships and foreign countries, and why present the moon goddess Artemis with the head of a praying mantis? Even though—said Felix to the Board, in his own defense—it was totally fitting, if you thought deeply enough about it. And Hermione’s return to life as a vampire in The Winter’s Tale: that had actually been booed. Felix had been delighted: What an effect! Who else had ever done it? Where there are boos, there’s life!

    —

    Those escapades, those flights of fancy, those triumphs had been the brainchildren of an earlier Felix. They’d been acts of jubilation, of a happy exuberance. In the time just before Tony’s coup, things had changed. They had darkened, and darkened so suddenly. Howl, howl, howl…

    But he could not howl.

    —

    His wife, Nadia, was the first to leave him, barely a year after their marriage. It was a late marriage for him, and an unexpected one: he hadn’t known he was capable of that kind of love. He was just discovering her virtues, just getting to really know her, when she’d died of a galloping staph infection right after childbirth. Such things happened, despite modern medicine. He still tries to recall her image, make her vivid for himself once more, but over the years she’s moved gently away from him, fading like an old Polaroid. Now she’s little more than an outline; an outline he fills with sadness.

    So he was on his own with his newborn daughter, Miranda. Miranda: what else would he have named a motherless baby girl with a middle-aged, doting father? She was what had kept him from sinking down into chaos. He’d held himself together the best way he could, which was not too well; but still, he’d managed. He’d hired help, of course—he’d needed some women, since he knew nothing about the practical side of baby care, and because of his work he couldn’t be there with Miranda all the time. But he’d spent every free moment he could with her. Though there hadn’t been many free moments.

    He’d been entranced with her from the start. He’d hovered, he’d marveled. So perfect, her fingers, her toes, her eyes! Such a delight! Once she could talk he’d even taken her to the theatre; so bright she’d been. She’d sit there, taking it all in, not wriggling or bored as a lesser two-year-old would have been. He’d had such plans: once she was bigger they would travel together, he could show her the world, he could teach her so many things. But then, at the age of three…

    High fever. Meningitis. They’d tried to reach him, the women, but he’d been in rehearsal with strict orders not to be interrupted and they hadn’t known what to do. When he finally got home there were frantic tears, and then the drive to the hospital, but it was too late, too late.

    The doctors had done everything they could: every platitude had been applied, every excuse offered. But nothing worked, and then she was gone. Carried off, as they used to say. But carried off where? She couldn’t have simply vanished from the universe. He’d refused to believe that.

    Lavinia, Juliet, Cordelia, Perdita, Marina. All the lost daughters. But some of them had been found again. Why not his Miranda?

    —

    What to

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