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A review by mothiver
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
challenging
dark
sad
tense
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? Yes
5.0
Holy fuck.
Book that makes you insane. Book that eats your brain. Book that is all I will be thinking about for WEEKS.
This is, first and foremost, a Hamlet retelling, and the way it interfaces with the original text is absolutely beautiful. Read the original Hamlet first, if you haven’t - trust me when I say you will get SO MUCH MORE out of this book afterwards. There is a perfect balance maintained throughout between resonances with the original text and carefully placed dissonant notes that together create a textual conversation I was delighted to engage in. This novel is an effective thriller and a gorgeous train-crash tragedy, but it is also, on some level, a reading of Hamlet, and I must say it is a reading I very much agree with.
Hayden himself is absolutely stunning, and I could write a whole essay on the way the book draws you into his thoroughly fractured mind, the way his neuroses and thought spirals are depicted, but I don’t want to spoil the experience too much, so I will just say it is both immersive and viscerally *real*, and let that serve as both recommendation and warning. The author has performed a flawless surgical transplant, removing shakespearian ideas about death, the afterlife, and fate and slotting in modern scientific models and medical research in their place, and that change spirals out across Hayden’s thinking patterns in a deeply believable way that reframes the entire premise.
But even with that, in my mind the mark of a truly perfect Hamlet isn’t Hamlet himself, but Horatio and Ophelia. If those two both feel right, you’ve got magic. This book has magic. It’s such a breath of fresh air to see an Ophelia who is allowed to be empowered and human without being over-idealised, and the relationship between Hayden and Horatio knocked the breath out of my lungs more than once. There was a point towards the end where I simply had to put the book down and breathe for a minute before I could go on witnessing it.
For as much as every element of the premise and plot is making me crazy, “what if Horatio made a life-for-a-life bargain with the literal narrative path of Hamlet as a tragedy and WON ” will truly be living in my brain rent free for the rest of time.
Book that makes you insane. Book that eats your brain. Book that is all I will be thinking about for WEEKS.
This is, first and foremost, a Hamlet retelling, and the way it interfaces with the original text is absolutely beautiful. Read the original Hamlet first, if you haven’t - trust me when I say you will get SO MUCH MORE out of this book afterwards. There is a perfect balance maintained throughout between resonances with the original text and carefully placed dissonant notes that together create a textual conversation I was delighted to engage in. This novel is an effective thriller and a gorgeous train-crash tragedy, but it is also, on some level, a reading of Hamlet, and I must say it is a reading I very much agree with.
Hayden himself is absolutely stunning, and I could write a whole essay on the way the book draws you into his thoroughly fractured mind, the way his neuroses and thought spirals are depicted, but I don’t want to spoil the experience too much, so I will just say it is both immersive and viscerally *real*, and let that serve as both recommendation and warning. The author has performed a flawless surgical transplant, removing shakespearian ideas about death, the afterlife, and fate and slotting in modern scientific models and medical research in their place, and that change spirals out across Hayden’s thinking patterns in a deeply believable way that reframes the entire premise.
But even with that, in my mind the mark of a truly perfect Hamlet isn’t Hamlet himself, but Horatio and Ophelia. If those two both feel right, you’ve got magic. This book has magic. It’s such a breath of fresh air to see an Ophelia who is allowed to be empowered and human without being over-idealised, and the relationship between Hayden and Horatio knocked the breath out of my lungs more than once. There was a point towards the end where I simply had to put the book down and breathe for a minute before I could go on witnessing it.
For as much as every element of the premise and plot is making me crazy, “
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder