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A review by monitaroymohan
Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid
2.0
It’s always fascinating to read other perspectives, accounts and realities of characters from Shakespeare’s works. This one tackles the Macbeths—a retelling from known facts about these people, not the fictionalised accounts in the play.
While the writing is precise and somewhat lyrical, it read like a highlights reel of the story and not the meat of it. I don’t know how many gaps the author had to fill in, but there’s not a ton of knowledge about the real people, so why not flesh it out—a creative non-fiction or historical fiction would have been a better and more engrossing route.
Because, while we shift from the past to the present, from the perspective of Lady Gruoch Macbeth, we don’t get the greatest or most innovative understanding of the character. In her past, she was sold off to the vile king and suffered through that marriage. And then one day she sees Macbeth, and voila, instant lust for the two of them. Quite a bizarre choice for their potent love story.
The history of the Macbeths is that they oversaw the union of the Scottish tribes to make Scotland and they reigned over a peaceful era. Dig into that from Gruoch‘s perspective. It’s all a rush. The book drops seeds of information, whereas I would have liked it to share more. Am I going to go digging for this? No. I picked up this book for that.
Sigh. It’s interesting, but it’s short and that may not have been the author’s mission.
While the writing is precise and somewhat lyrical, it read like a highlights reel of the story and not the meat of it. I don’t know how many gaps the author had to fill in, but there’s not a ton of knowledge about the real people, so why not flesh it out—a creative non-fiction or historical fiction would have been a better and more engrossing route.
Because, while we shift from the past to the present, from the perspective of Lady Gruoch Macbeth, we don’t get the greatest or most innovative understanding of the character. In her past, she was sold off to the vile king and suffered through that marriage. And then one day she sees Macbeth, and voila, instant lust for the two of them. Quite a bizarre choice for their potent love story.
The history of the Macbeths is that they oversaw the union of the Scottish tribes to make Scotland and they reigned over a peaceful era. Dig into that from Gruoch‘s perspective. It’s all a rush. The book drops seeds of information, whereas I would have liked it to share more. Am I going to go digging for this? No. I picked up this book for that.
Sigh. It’s interesting, but it’s short and that may not have been the author’s mission.