Hag-Seed
As seen:
By Margaret Atwood
avg rating
1 review
- Longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction **Selected as a Book of the Year — Observer, Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, i magazine `It’s got a thunderstorm in it. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda.
Reviews
St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 3rd April 2025.
Hag-seed. Margaret Atwood.
The majority of the group loved this book, and had no negative comments about it at all. We all liked Felix’s character, and how he came to life; we were interested in Felix’s relationship with his dead daughter Miranda, how he pictured her ghost to keep himself sane after losing her, and how Miranda did not remain a baby but grew up as she might have done in real life. We appreciated the clever way in which Felix arranged the casting of Ariel, and the idea that the cast were allowed to use expletives only if they were Shakespearean ones. Several people commented on the actors’ reprise after the play and how it provided a good ending to the book.
We spent some time discussing productions of The Tempest and how it can be brought to life. Several people said they wished that we could have been taught Shakespeare at school in a better fashion, and how Shakespeare is so fundamental in English studies, being often basic to everything else and always involving moral dilemmas.
We also talked about how this book can be seen on a number of levels, some of which depend upon how well the reader knows The Tempest (we found the synopsis at the back very useful). Is it better to see a play first and then read a book about the play, or to read and research the play before seeing it? And, how does this differ depending on the nature and modernity of the production?
One reader found the book hard to engage with, and though she saw themes developing, it failed to hold her interest. It was also interesting to see that this group liked the book much more, overall, than the other St Just reading group which met in February to talk about it.
