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tracey_stewart's review against another edition
3.0
I've been calling Caliban's Hour a Shakespeare fan-fic, and every virtual page just cemented this for me. It's both a sequel to The Tempest and the story from Caliban's point of view. It's both knowledgeable of the play and completely dismissive of it ... and anyone who's read any of my blog knows how "dismissive of Shakespeare" is going to sit with me.
Basically, the tale takes place some twenty years after The Tempest, and a shadow has come to Verona seeking Miranda - seeking revenge. It's not spoilerific to say that once he discovers where she is, he spends the rest of the story looming over her in her bed forcing her to listen as he tells her his version of everything that happened.
Everything.
The audiobook is read by Ron Perlman. I adore Ron Perlman. And Ron Perlman's voice is one huge reason I adore Ron Perlman. His performance in this was beautiful. In places, this was not fun, and the only saving grace was that voice.
One problem I had with the book was the vocabulary placed in Caliban's mouth. I kept thinking "Really? Caliban using a word like 'inchoate'?" Now, four-plus hours of listening to guttural monosyllables would be unpleasant, even in Ron Perlman's voice but my opinion is that if you're going to base your work on someone else's you need to have some respect for the original. Otherwise, why bother? I contented myself while listening to (most of) it by telling myself that no character in Shakespeare is monosyllabic; Prospero did in fact teach Caliban, so Caliban could legitimately be well-spoken. Except if Caliban has been alone on the island for twenty years, no one to talk to, no books, nothing, I would think some of the vocabulary might atrophy. But then I finally went to take a look at the play.
Caliban speaks 1348 words in the play, totalling 5631 characters (that may actually include some punctuation; oops). That's an average of (assuming I did cull all the punctuation) 4.177 letters per word. I sorted them and eliminated duplicates and counted them again, and that gave me 541 unique words, totalling 2781 characters: about 5 letters each. (He says "I" and "me" more than any other words, which brings down his overall average.) He never uses vocabulary like "inchoate", he never waxes rhapsodic as the novella's does. He does use some polysyllabic words, but they are mostly names and words that he heard from Prospero: "nonpareil". I don't buy this Caliban's eloquence.
The other aggravation, the pace, is a more serious quibble. When I step back from it, I realize that it's a good story, and the writing is, on the whole, excellent; it's a solid, knowledgeable re-imagining of Caliban's origins and inner life. My frustration with the book is that I can't shake the feeling that this could easily have been a short story My issue is the storytelling conceit that Caliban is standing over Miranda spewing out all this tale, a tale which takes something like four hours on the cassettes but which would take a person telling the story ex tempore a good bit longer, I'd expect. And I just can't buy a setting like this, of a man stooped over a woman's bed for hours at a time, threatening her with death, but in the meantime ... just talking. Without the framing story (and the occasional "You see, Miranda"), told as a straightforward tale of The Tempest From Caliban's Angle, I think this would be much stronger. Or perhaps if it started just the same in a prologue, then as he stands over Miranda and declares his intentions switched to straight storytelling, beginning, middle, and end… Caliban's intent is revenge upon Miranda, of course – but it's not a quick revenge. First he is going to tell her things she needs to know. Starting with the moment she and her father set foot upon the island. No, starting with his earliest memories. No, starting with his birth. No ... starting with before his birth. When he finally comes to the point of killing her at the end, I was replying to Mr. Perlman along the lines of "Oh, thank God, yes, please".
The repetitiveness of this is just a little exasperating. It kept reminding me of a complaint I once heard about Shakespeare (and which I've never found true in the plays) - it goes on and on for three pages (or the audio equivalent) and the upshot of those three pages is: it's raining. This goes in a spiral that circles tighter and tighter till there's nowhere to go - then breaks open the spiral, only to start a new one. I wonder if this would be as aggravating in print; probably.
I find it so surprising that the novella directly contradicts the play in many places. Caliban bitterly attributes the deaths of all the sailors on the ship to Prospero – when, in the play, no one died. No one.
PROSPERO
But are they, Ariel, safe?
ARIEL
Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.
Caliban, of course, limns himself as the long-suffering hard-put-upon tragic hero of the piece. He never did nothin'. Rape Miranda? Why, he never. It was all her fault, the minx. Plot with Trinculo and Stephano to kill Prospero and give Miranda to Stephano as a gift? Not he.
Not long ago I enjoyed the Chop Bard examination of The Tempest. This outraged me, by times. Either Shakespeare or Williams's Caliban is a big lying liar, and my money is on Caliban.
Basically, the tale takes place some twenty years after The Tempest, and a shadow has come to Verona seeking Miranda - seeking revenge. It's not spoilerific to say that once he discovers where she is, he spends the rest of the story looming over her in her bed forcing her to listen as he tells her his version of everything that happened.
Everything.
The audiobook is read by Ron Perlman. I adore Ron Perlman. And Ron Perlman's voice is one huge reason I adore Ron Perlman. His performance in this was beautiful. In places, this was not fun, and the only saving grace was that voice.
One problem I had with the book was the vocabulary placed in Caliban's mouth. I kept thinking "Really? Caliban using a word like 'inchoate'?" Now, four-plus hours of listening to guttural monosyllables would be unpleasant, even in Ron Perlman's voice but my opinion is that if you're going to base your work on someone else's you need to have some respect for the original. Otherwise, why bother? I contented myself while listening to (most of) it by telling myself that no character in Shakespeare is monosyllabic; Prospero did in fact teach Caliban, so Caliban could legitimately be well-spoken. Except if Caliban has been alone on the island for twenty years, no one to talk to, no books, nothing, I would think some of the vocabulary might atrophy. But then I finally went to take a look at the play.
Caliban speaks 1348 words in the play, totalling 5631 characters (that may actually include some punctuation; oops). That's an average of (assuming I did cull all the punctuation) 4.177 letters per word. I sorted them and eliminated duplicates and counted them again, and that gave me 541 unique words, totalling 2781 characters: about 5 letters each. (He says "I" and "me" more than any other words, which brings down his overall average.) He never uses vocabulary like "inchoate", he never waxes rhapsodic as the novella's does. He does use some polysyllabic words, but they are mostly names and words that he heard from Prospero: "nonpareil". I don't buy this Caliban's eloquence.
The other aggravation, the pace, is a more serious quibble. When I step back from it, I realize that it's a good story, and the writing is, on the whole, excellent; it's a solid, knowledgeable re-imagining of Caliban's origins and inner life. My frustration with the book is that I can't shake the feeling that this could easily have been a short story My issue is the storytelling conceit that Caliban is standing over Miranda spewing out all this tale, a tale which takes something like four hours on the cassettes but which would take a person telling the story ex tempore a good bit longer, I'd expect. And I just can't buy a setting like this, of a man stooped over a woman's bed for hours at a time, threatening her with death, but in the meantime ... just talking. Without the framing story (and the occasional "You see, Miranda"), told as a straightforward tale of The Tempest From Caliban's Angle, I think this would be much stronger. Or perhaps if it started just the same in a prologue, then as he stands over Miranda and declares his intentions switched to straight storytelling, beginning, middle, and end… Caliban's intent is revenge upon Miranda, of course – but it's not a quick revenge. First he is going to tell her things she needs to know. Starting with the moment she and her father set foot upon the island. No, starting with his earliest memories. No, starting with his birth. No ... starting with before his birth. When he finally comes to the point of killing her at the end, I was replying to Mr. Perlman along the lines of "Oh, thank God, yes, please".
The repetitiveness of this is just a little exasperating. It kept reminding me of a complaint I once heard about Shakespeare (and which I've never found true in the plays) - it goes on and on for three pages (or the audio equivalent) and the upshot of those three pages is: it's raining. This goes in a spiral that circles tighter and tighter till there's nowhere to go - then breaks open the spiral, only to start a new one. I wonder if this would be as aggravating in print; probably.
I find it so surprising that the novella directly contradicts the play in many places. Caliban bitterly attributes the deaths of all the sailors on the ship to Prospero – when, in the play, no one died. No one.
PROSPERO
But are they, Ariel, safe?
ARIEL
Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.
Caliban, of course, limns himself as the long-suffering hard-put-upon tragic hero of the piece. He never did nothin'. Rape Miranda? Why, he never. It was all her fault, the minx. Plot with Trinculo and Stephano to kill Prospero and give Miranda to Stephano as a gift? Not he.
Not long ago I enjoyed the Chop Bard examination of The Tempest. This outraged me, by times. Either Shakespeare or Williams's Caliban is a big lying liar, and my money is on Caliban.
cadillaceazy's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
exlibrisbitsy's review against another edition
4.0
I’ve been on a bit of a Shakespeare kick recently and so I was surprised to stumble across this book, Caliban’s Hour by one of my favorite authors Tad Williams. It is a short novella written from the point of view of Caliban giving his history and version of events from the play The Tempest. For those familiar with his work his novels tend to be on the longish side, and so to read a book only 200 pages long was interesting to say the least. Especially since the entire book is just a single night with Caliban cornering Prospero’s daughter Miranda and pouring out his whole life story with the intent of killing her at the end, but first making her understand why.
It was fascinating to read about Caliban's past as a child growing up with a mute mother on an abandoned island seamlessly woven into his story within the confines of the play. Even that though was redone from this new point of view. Caliban is not nearly as sinister as he would be portrayed and how could he be when before Prospero and Miranda had arrived he had never seen another human being aside from his mother and couldn't even speak? The new explanation of what really happened at that island was a very interesting reinterpretation of the tale.
I do think that if you have not read or seen The Tempest then this book might be a little confusing especially towards the end. As the play nears its climax the slow and methodical pace of the book speeds up incredibly to the point where the things that happened seemed too fantastical to be believed. It robbed the point of view of some of its credibility.
The book's ending though, which takes place years after the close of the play, was very well done and that saved this book for me. A note on the cover though, disregard it completely. It is not what it looks like at all and I'm sure some fans of Shakespeare and fantasy were scared away from what is really a fantastic book. The publisher did this book a great disservice by slapping a trashy romance novel cover on this book. If it wasn't for the familiar name (and I actually did wonder if it was the Tad Williams and had to check myself) I would not have bothered to pick up this book at all. I'm glad I did though.
It was fascinating to read about Caliban's past as a child growing up with a mute mother on an abandoned island seamlessly woven into his story within the confines of the play. Even that though was redone from this new point of view. Caliban is not nearly as sinister as he would be portrayed and how could he be when before Prospero and Miranda had arrived he had never seen another human being aside from his mother and couldn't even speak? The new explanation of what really happened at that island was a very interesting reinterpretation of the tale.
I do think that if you have not read or seen The Tempest then this book might be a little confusing especially towards the end. As the play nears its climax the slow and methodical pace of the book speeds up incredibly to the point where the things that happened seemed too fantastical to be believed. It robbed the point of view of some of its credibility.
The book's ending though, which takes place years after the close of the play, was very well done and that saved this book for me. A note on the cover though, disregard it completely. It is not what it looks like at all and I'm sure some fans of Shakespeare and fantasy were scared away from what is really a fantastic book. The publisher did this book a great disservice by slapping a trashy romance novel cover on this book. If it wasn't for the familiar name (and I actually did wonder if it was the Tad Williams and had to check myself) I would not have bothered to pick up this book at all. I'm glad I did though.
jdhobbes's review against another edition
4.0
I love the idea of Shakespearean fanfiction, and have to respect any author brave enough to try it. I admit that The Tempest was never one of my more favorite plays, however, and I don't remember a lot of the details from it, so I may be missing the full flavor of this book.
That being said, I still enjoyed Caliban's Hour immensely. Tad Williams took a well-known villain, a literal monster, and turned him into a sympathetic character. Parts of his story are truly heart-breaking.
One of my favorite things about this book, however, is how Williams talks about words and language. Caliban had no concept of language or names before Prospero taught him, and the way Caliban describes this transition of understanding is quite spectacular. In the light of a Shakespearean character (when Shakespeare himself was such a pioneer of language), I think this theme is especially meaningful and I just love the handling of it.
That being said, I still enjoyed Caliban's Hour immensely. Tad Williams took a well-known villain, a literal monster, and turned him into a sympathetic character. Parts of his story are truly heart-breaking.
One of my favorite things about this book, however, is how Williams talks about words and language. Caliban had no concept of language or names before Prospero taught him, and the way Caliban describes this transition of understanding is quite spectacular. In the light of a Shakespearean character (when Shakespeare himself was such a pioneer of language), I think this theme is especially meaningful and I just love the handling of it.
amac_reads's review against another edition
4.0
This work was an interesting interpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest from Caliban's point of view. Prospero was a well-written and believable villain and it was impossible not to feel sympathy towards Caliban after reading this. His reaction/feelings towards Miranda seemed a little unfounded based off of the reasons given, but overall that didn't detract too much from the work.
owlegory's review against another edition
4.0
Basically a retelling of The Tempest from Caliban's pov. It feels like a fun exercise in character voice and development (using a well known character and story, even though there are many plot twists from the original play).
In general, Caliban's voice and perception feels consistent and believable for his experiences. As always, the writing itself is clever and has a few sentences/phrases that really make you stop and think. I'm a fan of Williams' writing in general, and while this felt more stylized like a piece of Renaissance lit, I still enjoyed it. The whole story is clearly a metaphor against colonialism. I take some issue with the way the women are presented, but I can see how Williams is trying to give the daughter agency over her life via the ending.
Overall a quick read and interesting enough that I kept reading if not just to see how it would end.
In general, Caliban's voice and perception feels consistent and believable for his experiences. As always, the writing itself is clever and has a few sentences/phrases that really make you stop and think. I'm a fan of Williams' writing in general, and while this felt more stylized like a piece of Renaissance lit, I still enjoyed it. The whole story is clearly a metaphor against colonialism. I take some issue with the way the women are presented, but I can see how Williams is trying to give the daughter agency over her life via the ending.
Overall a quick read and interesting enough that I kept reading if not just to see how it would end.
bookish_ann's review
1.0
Did not care for the style, the tone, the characters... did not care at all. I liked the premise but found the book itself to be very dull.
audleigh's review against another edition
3.0
I wavered between rating this three or four stars because its more of a three and a half star book. The main reason it loses points is because the narrative was at times plodding and at other times information seemed to come out of nowhere. Overall it was an enjoyable read but lost a few points for editing.
anna_04's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
nelnjali's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75