Author: Dot Hutchinson
Publisher: Lerner
Rating: WARTY!
Yes, this is an overly florid, if not pretentious, re-telling of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I should have known from the limp title that it wasn't worth my time, but I was foolish, I admit! In this version, the main character, Ophelia (whose last name is presumably 'Pain') is the daughter a school administrator at a boarding school. I couldn't get past the first two chapters, because it was so mind-dumbingly (and numbingly) boring that it put me to sleep. I've seen some reviews which say that the writing is beautiful, but I disagree, if this novel had had that much going for it, I would have stayed longer, but not only was the writing tedious, the 'action' was, too. And none of the plotting made sense.
With the original Hamlet, as over-blown as that was, at least it made some kind of sense. The monarchy is hereditary, and the death of a king is momentous (if you buy into royalty, which I don't), but in this novel there is no royalty. The dead "king" is no more than the Big Man on campus, a member of the Hamlet family (!), leaving his tortured son, Dane behind. Seriously? We’re expected to believe that this family has "ruled" the school for generations. What? We're also expected to believe that his death has thrown everything into chaos. Double what? Whence the school board? This man was not the king!
Dane’s uncle, of course, announces plans to marry the widow Me Miserum, and insane Dane (whose last name is undoubtedly 'Gelded') is conveniently thrown into the company of Ophelia Pain. The problem is that there isn't just one ghost in this story; there's a whole pantheon of fairies, and Ophelia can see them all. This is technically known in the medical world as 'having issues'. The fairies are called the bean sidhe for reasons unknown. Maybe it’s explained later in the novel but from the reviews I've read, nothing is explained. What definitely isn't explained is why this novel, based on a play set in Denmark, has an Irish term for the fairies! They may as well be the bean burrito, or the has-been sidhe. Suffice to say that Ophelia is under a regime of medication which she isn’t following as well as perhaps she ought. This explains a lot, IMO!
That’s pretty much all I can say having read so little of this. I picked it up (fortunately for my wallet) at the library and it sounded, superficially, to be interesting. It wasn't. It might have been, had a competent book editor had her way with it. As it is, it just goes to show that Big Publishing™ isn't about getting the best out of writers. It’s about getting the most out of them (and for 'most out of them' read, 'milking them dry'). An interesting number of reviews began with the preface, "This book isn't for everyone..."! You know when a review begins like that, the news can’t be good. I rate this novel 'warty' based on what I read. Your mileage may differ, but for me, life is too short to waste in trying to wade through a novel that doesn’t grab me by the balls of my feet. I was rewarded for my disloyalty to this by picking up a much better novel (one I did buy!), which I'll be reviewing (read: raving over!) here before long. Well, not right here specifically, that would be foolish, but in the blog somewhere….
