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Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'
Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's the Tempest Retold by Margaret Atwood
3 reviews
james1star's review against another edition
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Despite never having read Shakespeare’s The Tempest and with no real desire to either, I do think this was a very good (re)telling. For a quick plot summary, in Hag-Seed we follow the main character of Felix who was the artist director at a theatre I believe but his assistant orchestrates a coup leaving him lost with the only company being the ghost/hallucination of his recently deceased daughter Miranda - from reviews and as the book develops it’s apparent this is the fate of one of mcs of the original play, Prospero. Years later he gets a chance to enact his revenge on those who ousted him with the help of actors in his current play who are prisoners… because he took up the position teaching literacy to inmates at a local prison and each year he gets them to put on a Shakespearean play and this year is obviously The Tempest. Like Prospero he starts to become obsessed with getting his revenge and other things happen too but that’s all I’ll say.
What I think I loved most about this book was how Felix got the prisoners, who each had their own personality btw, to get involved with the text and relate it to themselves. The analysis of the character of Caliban was very interesting, he’s clearly a baddie and most of them wanted to play him because they too had been viewed in a negative light given their circumstances, upbringing and the like so the humanising of this this character was rather insightful. I guess trying to see things from different POVs is helpful too despite it being hard sometimes and this message can certainly be applied in other aspects of life. Being set in a prison I think was very clever by Atwood and allows for conversions to be made both within and outside of the book about the role of leisure-based activities in such environments, should criminals just be punished or is reinvigorating one’s mental, emotional and creative brain beneficial for retribution and future rehabilitation? I think the latter. I also appreciated how the characters in the book were in for mid-low crimes that many people could so easily get caught up in so you can relate to them more unlike serial killers for example. The way the inmates/actors fully immersed themselves in the story and shedding a contemporary light on it was fantastic with elements of rap for example, the after stories for particular characters linking it to current events like climate change and bringing interesting thoughts to what old William was actually talking about at times too.
I don’t think there was anything particularly bad about this book and I would certainly recommend it. It’s not a top rating purely because the story wasn’t fully to my taste or my preferred genre I guess but that being said I am intrigued to maybe check out another in the series of Shakespeare retellings. I listened to the audiobook narrated by R.H. Thomson and I’d definitely recommend this version, you can clearly tell when he’s doing different characters, it’s clear, entertaining and very bingeable.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Mental illness, Child death, and Grief
Minor: Sexism, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Racism, and Sexual violence
kathi_hoehne's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Grief, Child death, Confinement, Mental illness, and Eating disorder
taylorjai's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Child death
Moderate: Rape, Grief, Death, and Drug use
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