A review by peppermintlegs
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Lady Macbeth retells and revamps the story of…I mean, guess. Lady Macbeth, or Roscille of Breizh, is married off to Macbeth, Thane of Glammis, in medieval Scotland at seventeen years of age. She’s known in her home court for her ethereal, supernatural beauty: her silver hair, unbelievably pale skin, and eyes so capable of ensorcelling that she wears a veil to protect the men around her. She’s called witch-touched, and the men around her fear her for it. Moving to Scotland is a dramatic change: Roscille’s handmaiden is removed from her and presumably killed, the castle is high on a cliff’s edge over a cold sea in constant turmoil, and the landscape and court are equally cold and barren. Macbeth of Glammis is an imposing figure, both in notoriety and physical stature, treating Roscille gently at first, but as his power and ambition grow, feeding off each other, he becomes more violent towards her and his fellow Scotsmen.

As the focus of the Macbeth tale has changed, so have the major themes. The original explores ambition and manipulation: Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is known in literature for her maturity and uncontested wielding of her power over her husband, and her eventual madness. Reid’s Roscille embodies the ermine of the French court, a naïf thrown alone into a culture and role only familiar for the violence enacted upon the women in the space. And this is the theme of this telling: the eternal and inevitable violence and abuse men do to women, and the ways in which women bear these mistreatments. The witches of the play become Les Lavandières, or the washerwomen, who Macbeth keeps at his disposal for his prophecies. Duncane’s sons become more prominent players, and Macduff is relegated to a handful of paragraphs offscreen. 

Reid’s Lady Macbeth is atmospheric and tense, drawn with cold, harsh lines and ragged texture. Roscille is torn between her naïveté and the role thrust upon her as wife and queen, and she finds herself similarly torn between love for another man and service to her husband and country. Attempts at petty grabs for agency are rebuked and punished, and only once she is disposed of entirely does she grasp the power she’s been able to wield the whole time. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the novel and the incorporation of additional supernatural elements that would have been present in the folk tales of the period—the setting is used to its fullest extent. The twists on Les Lavandières and Banqhuo and Fléance’s roles were used to expand upon Macbeth’s character, as for the first half of the novel he spends so much time offscreen. The confluence of cultures—French, Breizh, English, Norse, and Scottish—fleshed out the sprawling politics behind and beyond this Scottish clan. 

The nature of adaptation and retelling, however, is that it inherently draws comparison to the source material. Trading the Lady Macbeth for this child in a hostile environment is a bold move, as is the highlighting of more minor or entirely off-page characters, such as Duncane’s sons and the Banqhuo line. I love a clever, manipulative royal, but Roscille was constantly thwarted and punished for the only power she had, which does fall in line with the theme of men’s violence towards women. I do believe I would have found the novel more enjoyable as its own work, divorced from the cultural weight of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth—I found myself continually questioning why Reid chose that character to tell this story. Truly, I think Roscille could have been an Ophelia or a Desdemona and would have borne equal similarity to her source. I’d recommend Reid’s Lady Macbeth for those seeking an atmospheric tragedy, political medieval fantasy, or those who want to explore Lady Macbeth’s growth from a porcelain naïf to the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare’s first act.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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