Hag-Seed, by Margaret Atwood

9780804141291
Hogarth, 2016
320 pp

arc - my thanks to the algorithms and the good people at LT.

If you haven't read this book yet, go and get a copy. It's delightful. My only regret is that I didn't listen to it, although I'm thinking I just might -- there are a few theatrical numbers here that would be more entertaining in stereo, that is, if they're actually set to music. If anyone knows whether this is so, please let me know.

As I said, the book is just delightful -- it's satirical, it's funny in some spots, and a bit poignant here and there, but just enough so that it doesn't get sappy.  Hag-Seed, is of course, one more offering from the Hogarth Shakespeare series, and this time around, Margaret Atwood takes on The Tempest. I think she's done a great job with it.

This novel follows the follies and foibles of Felix Phillips, the ousted artistic director of the Makeshiweg Festival who has been removed from his position as top dog by some conniving manipulation by his trusted assistant. [As just a small aside, I recently read an article in the New Yorker which identifies Makeshiweg as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival  -- not being from Canada, I had no clue. But that's just my little nod to the Stratford Shakespeare festival; knowing that little factoid or not knowing it before reading it doesn't really make a difference. ]  Anyway, going into his own form of exile, he reappears some years later as a teacher in a prison where certain inmates are allowed to attend a literacy course where they study different types of literature. Felix decides to not only teach them Shakespeare, but also to allow the inmates to put on plays based on the Bard's work. This time around it's The Tempest, which was the production he was going to put on at the time he got booted out of the festival.  Some twelve years later now, Felix realizes that the play would be a great vehicle through which he can have his revenge on all of the people who had worked behind his back to depose him, since he's learned that they're coming to the prison to see the play before they decide to take away the funding for the literacy program.  

So many people have written about this book, professional critics and casual reader people such as myself, so I won't go any further than that little appetite whetter of a synopsis.  What I will say is that while I loved the central thematic idea here of different types of prisons, a lot of other things crop us here as well: loss and grief, redemption, and the healing power of art, to name only a few. It's a lovely book, funny and tragic at the same time, and a joy to read from beginning to end. I suppose it might have Shakespearean purists foaming at the mouth with indignance, but pish-posh on that. I loved it. 

It's a fine book and you don't even need to be familiar with the play prior to reading the novel, since Atwood includes a lovely summary at the end. Highly, highly recommended. 

...and now, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show, by Frank Delaney

My thanks to the Librarything Early Reviewer's Program, for selecting me to read this book. I would have bought it anyway had I not received it, because it's written by a very good author.

Frank Delaney has given readers yet another fine story, one which takes place among the tumultuous events of his native Ireland's 20th century history, and one which, after you've read it, you won't soon forget.  This is, of course, one of the main themes that run constantly throughout Delaney's books.  This time, the action is centered on either side (before and after) of  the general elections of 1932.  It's okay if you know little to nothing about Irish political history; the author gives you enough background to make the time period and events understandable.  Amid this political backdrop, Delaney introduces the reader to one Ben McCarthy, a young, naive 18-year old boy who little by little comes to be a man carrying the weight of his world on his shoulders.  Ben's life, and that of his family,  is altered forever by the entrance of Venetia Kelly and her Traveling Show.  How this happens, and how it's connected to the 1932 elections is the main thrust of the story of this novel.

The novel slowly draws you in, keeping you there until the very last page.  Delaney starts out with introductions to the principal players of this novel: Ben McCarthy and his family, who live a better life than many of their neighbors & acquaintances; Sarah Kelly, actress and mother of Venetia Kelly; and King Kelly, Venetia's grandfather, who lives by the golden rule, which for him is "the man with the gold makes the rules." (257) Throughout the story, the author launches into "digressions," in which he gives you some of the history, folklore and other cultural bits about Ireland, all perfectly relevant to the story, and to which you should definitely pay attention.  As other reviewers have noted, it starts out a bit slow and may feel a bit sloggy at first, but you will be handsomely rewarded if you continue and do not give up.Trust me on this one.

There are some wonderfully humorous moments in this book, which is also highly metaphorical in places, but Delaney does not hold back on the more  frightening and sorrowful truths about the playing field of Irish politics and the lot of the poorer Irish people of the time. 

This one I can definitely recommend. If you don't care about the politics, that's okay -- there are other stories at work here that will keep you reading, but do keep in mind that the whole is so much greater than its parts.  Overall -- a very good read. Oh! The end was a bit over melodramatic for my tastes, but you may want to have a hanky handy as you're finishing the book.

Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic, by George James Grinnell

First, my thanks to Librarything and to Goodreads both for sending me this book through their respective Early Reviewers programs. 

This is a tough one to review because my expectations were different than the reality of this book.

George Grinnell, the author, lays out the story of how in 1955 he and four other guys, all under the leadership of one Arthur Moffatt, spent about three months on a canoe trek from Stony Rapids in Saskatchewan to Baker Lake in Nunavit to get away from the world for a while.  Moffatt was the kind of guy who would much rather be communing with nature and indigenous peoples than living the hustle in the real world, and he had planned this trip intending to add a kind of spiritual reinforcement to daily life. He brought no radio, no modern conveniences, nothing really except supplies to live on and a philosophy about nature and living in the world. Grinnell, from a well-placed and rather famous family, was a rebel in his youth, always blasting away at capitalism and the system. This trip was right up his alley. From the time Moffatt, Grinnell and the others grabbed their paddles and started on their long journey, there were the occasional bouts of blizzards, rough waters, near-starvation, changing allegiances among the men  and other tribulations in an environment that would either make or break a person. Grinnell hung on mentally by keeping Moffatt's spiritual and philosophical teachings in his head while, according to him, the others were more worried about their physical needs.  Sadly, Moffatt never made it back alive, and as the book opens, the rest of the group are being questioned by the Mounties about Art's death. 

What I discovered about this book is that the real point of this book is not the "death on the barrens" of Arthur Moffatt, but rather about George Grinnell himself. He spends a huge chunk of time on his prominent family background, his personal life up to that point, and how after a life of  rebelliousness he came to find a spiritual inner wellness and meaning to life while on that canoe journey that ultimately took Moffatt's life. Although the story of the expedition itself is well told up to the point of Moffatt's death, this account is widely interspersed with philosophical musings from Zen koans, Inuit lore, literature, poetry and Moffatt's personal philosophy that helped George find his peace, only to lose it later after he had to make his way in the real world once more.

To be very honest, I thought from the title that the author was presenting a book about an expedition gone very, very wrong, and the chapter on the Mounties questioning the rest of the group about Moffatt's death made me even more intrigued to see what the heck had happened out there in the Canadian wilds in 1955. What I discovered was that both the title and the teaser opener were a bit misleading.

Books about spiritual awareness and how people find it, lose it and find it again  really aren't my cup of tea, but for many people out there I'm sure that this story might be quite motivational and inspiring.

The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova (thanks, Librarything!)

 my edition

First, my thanks to LibraryThing's early reviewers program for pulling my name out of the hat to win this book.  If you haven't yet visited LibraryThing, get on over there...great site. And my thanks to Little, Brown, for sending me a beautiful finished copy rather than an ARC.

So let's get to it.  Weighing in at nearly 600 pages, The Swan Thieves is a novel about obsession and art. It's also a story about love lost and found. The basic plot lines up like this: Robert Oliver is a well-known and somewhat eccentric painter who is arrested for going to the National Gallery, whipping out a knife, and tries to disfigure a painting there. Luckily, a guard stops him in time. After his arrest, he is put under psychiatric care, and his doctor, Andrew Marlow, wants to know why he did it. All he would say is that "I did it for her" and that he "did it for the woman I love." (20) After that, he doesn't say a word for a year, not to Marlow or to anyone. Marlow wants to understand not only what prompted Oliver to do this, but also why he refuses to speak. The only clues he has are some old letters, written in French (and which he has translated) to which Oliver seems greatly attached, and a painting of a beautiful woman, done by Oliver. Marlow's investigations take him back in time about 100 years, back to the France of the Impressionist period of art. There are actually three stories interwoven here: first, the story of Robert Oliver as told mainly by women who loved him; second, the story of Beatrice de Clerval, one of the writers of Oliver's letters, and third, about Marlow himself, and what he discovers about himself in his journey into Oliver's life.

Although the story grabbed my attention at first, for most of the first half of the book I waited for something interesting to happen.  Then as things started to pick up in the second half, suddenly everything became very clear.  It is throughout the second half of the story that the past becomes more involved with the present, where most of the action takes place.  Although the reader doesn't really figure it out until the very end, I had this flash of insight and I knew exactly what had driven Robert Oliver crazy. Lo and behold, when the truth is revealed, I was right. And I hate when that happens. Maybe I read way too much.

Kostova lets many voices tell their own stories; however, once I started reading the various modern-day narrations, they didn't come across as individual or distinguishable from any of the other characters. And also, dialog just didn't ring true. In Kate's story, for example, which was a conversation between herself and Dr. Marlow, the dialog was stilted, filled with descriptions and verbiage that one person just wouldn't use with another in personal conversation. The same was true with Mary.  I never really felt like I got to know anyone in this story, and I especially didn't think Marlow's character was believable or strong.  Another negative -- after all of the time and energy I put into this book, the ending (with its explanations) didn't take very long, and just sort of zoomed right on up there.

Overall, the story was okay, and the journey to the end was okay. I like books about people caught up in obsessions, and in that arena, the author did a great job. I loved Kostova's The Historian, but to compare the two wouldn't be fair.  I would recommend The Swan Thieves to people who enjoy love stories more than I do, and to people who like history interwoven with the present. Once again, however, I find myself swimming against the tide of people who were wowed with this book, so it's one of those you have to read for yourself rather than take my word for it. I do, however, predict it will be a bestseller very shortly.