Hag-seed

by Margaret Atwood, Penguin/Random House.

I love Margaret Atwood, especially that she ventures further off the reservation every year. She’s now decidedly eccentric, having moved past the feminist novels of her youth into speculative fiction, satire, sci-fi, plays… Now it’s Shakespeare’s turn for a shake in this modern-day telling of The Tempest, set in a prison, with a jaded theatre director in the role of Prospero, employing magic and mischief to take his revenge on the people who thwarted him. He coddles and cons his troupe of ne’er-do-well actors to play their roles in a way the playwright never imagined but which gives fresh life to his grand last play. This exuberant retelling is fun, funny, and makes me love the author even more.