A review by lizzillia
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

3.25

Published 13 August 2024. Sadly this re-imagining of Lady Macbeth did not work for me. Having read Ava Reid before, I was anticipating this but I think  that having spent 15 years discussing the Shakespeare play with students, of picking apart the character of Lady Macbeth, all of that spoilt the book for me. I went into this expecting to see facets of the Lady Macbeth I knew and I didn't find them. This Lady M, Roscilla, is 17 and sent by her French father to be Macbeth's bride. Touched by a witch's curse, the rumour is that if a man gazes into her eyes, he is doomed and so Roscilla is always veiled. The court/castle that she enters is full of men, brutal men. Her handmaid is immediately sent away. Who does all the work - who knows? but Roscilla seems to be the only woman in the castle. She is terrified of the marriage bed and spins a yarn to avoid it as long as possible. So our Lady M, rather than being the strong, manipulative woman of the play is a 17 year old virgin plunged into a castle full of dangerous men who see her as a threat, a danger. It is a violent time and she suffers violence, she loses power and at one point is blindfolded so she loses her sight as well. But ultimately, I suppose, this is a story about her taking back ownership of her life. If I could have read the book as that - of a woman overcoming dangers to take back control of her life - I would have enjoyed it more than I did, but I kept looking for the Shakespeare references and finding them either missing or changed. Several times, I shook my head in puzzlement when something happened in the plot in a totally different way to the way that the event had occurred in the play. Ava Reid is a super writer and I will pick her up again as I thoroughly enjoyed A Study in Drowning. But sorry, this was one that was not for me.