Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel (Hogarth Shakespeare)

The Hogarth Shakespeare Project [...] charges distinguished novelists to retell a Shakespeare play as a modern novel. So far, I have read two: Anne Tyler's "Vinegar Girl" (from Taming of the Shrew) and this, Margaret Atwood's "Hag Seed" (from The Tempest.) The first, a genuinely fun read, presents a single problem to the novelist: create a tale wherein a distracted father needs and wants to marry off an unwilling elder daughter into an improbable marriage that happens to work. Tyler solves her challenge and renders the tale with her usual skill.Now consider The Tempest: Magic, monsters, powerful spirits, villains, revenge, royalty, young love, an isolated mystical island, loneliness, suffering and atonement. How could these be blended into a modern novel? You will have to read the novel to see how, but let me assure you, Atwood gets it all in in as clever a conceit as ever I've read. Poet, novelist, and master and lover of the power of English, Atwood's plot and dialogue surprise and delight throughout the novel. To reap the most from this most excellent tale, the reader must be recently familiar with The Tempest. If not, I can heartily recommend downloading or streaming Helen Mirren's "The Tempest."

As you might expect Hag-Seed shows (again) that Margaret Atwood is a masterful writer, this time applying her hard work and talent to the Hogarth Shakespeare project, an effort to have Shakespeare retold by “acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today.” Years ago, I tried reading Handmaid's Tale and failed, so after a recommendation from a writer who I admire, I gave Hag-Seed a go. Everyone, I thought (and still do), should read at least one novel by Margaret Atwood.However, I feel that I’ve failed again. Clearly, the fault is all mine. Atwood’s writing in Hag-Seed was intelligent and sometimes fun, showing a thorough mastery of Shakespeare’s The Tempest,. Unfortunately, I too often felt I was reading a High School Honor’s lesson plan, a question and answer assignment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – it is after all a proven method for teaching, and even second-rate adjunct English professors like me assign such questions. And Hag-Seed probably would work well for students. But I wanted to read a novel and not a lesson plan. It also felt a little like those questions occasionally listed at the end of contemporary novels, presumably for book groups, maybe to insinuate that the novel will withstand the test of time and appear in a classroom someday. (The Hag-Seed inmates seemed more like superficial high school drama students than criminals.) Maybe I should blame the Hogarth concept for turning novel writing into a classroom assignment. The notion of using “the novel” as a big writing project feels like a setup, sure to fall short.Clearly, Margaret Atwood is an accomplished writer and despite the Hogarth High School approach, for the most part I enjoyed Hag-Seed.

Review first published on jenasbookreviews.blogspot.comFelix has been cast aside. No, not just cast aside! His place in the theater that he has worked so hard for, put all his dreams into, has been stolen from him by the one he thought he was mentoring. Now he is an out-of-work director/actor with no prospects with his life in shambles as this came on the heels of the death of his young daughter. So he goes into seclusion coming out only when a unique opportunity to ply his trade, as a teacher of a drama class for a correctional facility where he might be able to enact revenge on those that have wronged him. Several years pass and the time is finally upon him and what play would he have his group put on but The Tempest, the one he was working on when he was thrown out. What play could be more perfect?!This is almost a retelling of The Tempest while still using the original play itself as a focal point. The weaving of the two tales is wonderfully done and there is enough explanation that you can see the similarities even if you aren't familiar with the original Shakespeare play (and I only had a passing knowledge of it) but it doesn't seem heavy-handed and doesn't bog the story itself down. I really enjoyed it and am now interested in seeing what some of the other authors in this series have done with their stories.

As befits a prose treatment of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed plots the story of a deposed arts festival director, Felix Philips (Atwood’s Prospero), and his exile to the backwoods. The notions of exile and prisons is explored through him, and other characters in the book. Do we make our own prisons, can we escape them, what part can retribution play in settling old scores and forging ahead with something better and more just? The magic, is of course, the magic of theatre and the arts. Spirits, again, may or may not be real and Felix very much has his own ghost to deal with.Atwood toys with time in this story so that the actual Tempest is literally a play within the story. She makes it work by tying that play in thematically with Felix’s story. There is only one indulgence expected of the reader, which is to accept the notion of love at first site, which is managed, naturally, by Ariel.As you would expect, the main female character is strong and independent, though her working relationship with Felix as a father figure is to their mutual benefit. Felix also has a female helper in power. She believes in what he is doing with theatre in prison, whereas the conniving politico males do not. The other female is a sort of ghost, Felix’s female side perhaps? I did wonder if the author was tempted to site the action in a women’s prison, though this might have caused problems with the Miranda-Ferdinand conclusion; besides Margaret Atwood has portrayed imprisoned women before, not least in The Handmaid’s Tale.The culture of sexuality in male prisons is sidestepped, though I suspect the author had to do some deep thinking here. There are issues that Felix needs to overcome in terms of casting a “fairy” with all its implications. It must have crossed Margaret Atwood’s mind to delve into that area, but it really is very much a culture of its own and probably something of a minefield for any writer. What’s more, an exploration of male-male prison sexuality would have needed more attention and most probably increased the length of a superbly compact and well-crafted story.The book also explores the themes of death and grief and the role of the arts in prison reform. It will appeal to those who love Shakespeare, however, it works purely as a great story in its own right. Every word counts in this finely tuned novel and it’s a total breeze to read. Margaret Atwood surely is a magical writer.

It's often when an author writes something outside their usual style that you realise just how good they really are. This is true of Margaret Atwood. She's already got a good range of works under her belt, but this is a bit different again and is really skilfully executed. As the subtitle suggests, it's a retelling of Shakespeare's classic play, the Tempest. A plot summary of the Tempest is at the end of the novel - but may have been more helpful at the beginning. If you aren't familiar with the play, I think it would be worth reading the summary first.Atwood moves the Shakespearian setting to a Canadian jail in 2013. Felix, a previously successful theatre director, has fallen on hard times after the death of his wife and daughter and having been ousted from his job running a play festival. He finds a job teaching Shakespeare to prisoners and staging plays, and several years after his downfall, this role provides him an unexpected opportunity for a complicated revenge on those who usurped him.Felix is a sympathetic enough protagonist, and he is surrounded by strong supporting characters in the form of the prisoners and guards he works with. It's really well written, as you'd expect from Atwood. The pacing is good, it's gripping, it's easy to read and engaging from the start. It's true that elements of the plot are extremely far fetched, but Atwood can be excused to some extent as she did not create the source material. There were some places where I thought she could have subverted Shakespeare's original with better overall effect, whilst not undermining the spirit of the source material. The main example of this would spoil it for readers though so I won't expand.All the same, I can forgive a higher level of coincidence and implausibility because of the remit to retell what was a fantastical tale in the first place. Overall, her ideas work well and it's an book that can be thoroughly enjoyed. As someone who knows the Tempest very well, I found it easy to follow and pick up the parallels. As mentioned, I suspect readers who are not so familiar with the play will enjoy the book more if they read a synopsis of it first. This is a novel you can suspend your scepticism and simply enjoy. It reminds me that Atwood is really skilful writer and it's great to see authors trying different things.

I was very disappointed. The plot was flimsy and I found it almost entirely unbelievable. I love The Tempest but felt this was a poor representation of it. The part where the play is finally produced really is wasted reading time, the book just seemed to stumble along getting repetitive, yet most of the characters were never really developed so it left a something and nothing, unsatisfying feeling. I was extremely surprised at this from Margaret Atwood as I have loved a lot of her work

Published as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare Project that reimagines the Bard’s plays in a modern context, Atwood’s Hag-Seed is one of riotous fun and yet sobering sadness. In her version of “The Tempest”, artistic director Felix Phillips of the renowned Makeshiweg Theatre Festival finds himself deposed of his position and usurped by his assistant Tony just before his monumental staging of that same play could be realised. Felix retreats to a shanty on the edge of town to escape the prying and judging eyes of the smallish community, nurse his wounds and plot his revenge. The parallels between the characters and those of the play take on another dimension when Felix, with a new pseudonym, Mr Duke, takes up a temporary position at a correctional institution as the instructor for the Literacy through Literature programme. There, he finds his place and purpose in the most unexpected environment of barely literate inmates, who embraces his teaching and reinterpretation of Shakespeare plays with open arms. That is, until he finds his past and nemeses catch up with him and he must like Prospero, protect his sanctuary and its inhabitants.It is very much evident that Atwood had a lot of fun writing up this novel, and longtime readers who have come to expect her irreverent wit would not be disappointed. She also throws up surprisingly catchy verses that the inmates write, in tribute to the Bard, in authentic lingo. But most importantly, she gets under the skin of Felix/Duke/Prospero, who has a back story that makes this multi-layered narrative come alive. It is a play within a play within a play and Atwood pulls it off convincingly. And being Atwood, I suppose she just could not resist toying with the various possibilities of the characters’ fates after the play has ended, so she adds that into the story via the Fletcher County Correctional Players, as part of their project for Mr Duke, which to me felt like bonus material for the novel.Not Atwood’s strongest, but nonetheless a fun piece that seems to mark the less serious tone of her more recent work like “The Heart Goes Last” and the luminous short story collection, “Stone Mattress”.

This novel is a work of genius. I have long been a fan of Margaret Atwood, but this surpasses anything else of hers I have read. Atwood's interpretation of The Tempest brings a new dimension to Shakespeare's timeless play. Every theatre-goer should keep it on their bookshelf (or Kindle) for its fantastic insight as well as its highly readable quality.