Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Rating: 4 stars
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here" - The Tempest
Margaret Atwood digs up quite a few devils in her brilliantly complex retelling of the Tempest by William Shakespeare. This retelling houses another Tempest retelling. It is the play within the play. The complex connections between Shakespeare's characters and Atwood's characters kept my mind constantly working to keep up. It was brilliant, but definitely mentally exhausting.
Note: this reminded me in many ways of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. If you liked that book, I recommend this one.
Favorite Quotes:
The opening lines were amazing as always:
"Felix brushes his teeth. Then he brushes his other teeth, the false ones, and slides them into his mouth."
How can you not admire that kind of writing? So intriguing!
"It's the words that should concern you, he thinks at them. That's the real danger. Words don't show up on the scanners" (75).
"Your profanity, thinks Felix, has oft been your whoreson hag-born progenitor of literacy" (91).
"They think it's [the literacy program] a waste of time. they think you're [the prisoners] a waste of time. They don't care about your education, they want you to stay ignorant. They aren't interested in the life of the imagination, and they have failed to grasp the redemptive power of art. Worst of all: they think Shakespeare is a waste of time. They think he has nothing to teach" (205).
The Caliban team explains Caliban's likely future after the play's end. They explain that he will most likely live out his days as a caged animal for society's entertainment. When the finish--
"Silence in the room. It's all too plausible. 'But that's too dark for us,' says Leggs. 'Why should the other ones in this play get a second chance at life, but not him? Why's he have to suffer so much for being what he is? It's like he's, you know, black or Native or something. Five strikes against him from Day One. He never asked to get born" (272).
