Hag-Seed

I am a lover of all things Margaret Atwood.  I enjoyed an independent study of her writing my senior year of college, but I still have not read everything she's written.  I didn't even know of Hag-Seed until a colleague and fellow English teacher mentioned it in conversation.  I think we were talking about the vast popularity and disturbing relevance of The Handmaid's Tale, which was the first Atwood text I encountered.

Hag-Seed is a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which I studied early in my undergraduate program, under the tutelage of a nun, with intense focus on written criticism of the play.  Atwood sets it as a play within a play.  I've linked a review of it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/16/hag-seed-review-margaret-atwood-tempest-hogarth-shakespeare

One of the aspects I find most intriguing is the phantom daughter of the main character, Felix.  She, Miranda, named after the daughter of The Tempest, died prior to the novel's outset; yet, she is alive and still developing in Felix's mind.  He sees her in his home.  I am unsure how this will be resolved in the story, but it suggests a heart-wrenching need for self-awareness and a squaring with reality.

I'm also intrigued by the play within the story's setting in a prison.  The Tempest itself has multiple prisons--both literal and figurative--built into it, so it's entirely (and symbolically) appropriate that this retelling centers around a prison.

One final, for today, point of interest is the chronology.  It opens with the production and viewing of the play, then takes the reader back in time, so we can see what led to that point.  I flipped back to that beginning yesterday, although I'm mid-way through, to revisit the beginning, which I suspect is also the climax of the tale.