Letters to my Husband – Stephanie Butland

Elizabeth’s letters are her way of dealing with the tragedy of her husband Mike’s recent death. Despite the support she gets from Mike’s friends Blake and Andy, his mother Patricia, and her sister Mel, who has flown in from Australia, it is only in the letters that she lets her grief flow.

Mike was a policeman and off duty when he plunged into Butler’s Pond to save eighteen-year-old Kate Micklethwaite. He saved her life but lost his own. Kate recovers slowly, frustratingly for Elizabeth and Blake (a police colleague), who both want to know how the accident occurred, for emotional and professional reasons, respectively. Kate’s parents, Rufus and Richenda, are protective of their daughter; they are grateful for Mike’s actions in saving her life but regard Elizabeth and Blake’s badgering for details as harmful to her mental recovery.

There is tension between and within the camps as the novel unfolds in three timelines, punctuated by Elizabeth’s heartfelt letters. There is Now, as events develop in a not unexpected way; there is Then, which relates how Mike and Elizabeth fell in love, married and came to terms with childlessness; and there is Between which slowly reveals what only Kate knows but isn’t saying.

It is a nice construction, and well executed. The eight characters (nine with Mike, deceased) are well drawn in the main, though Blake and Andy tend to merge (becoming Blandy, according to my Reading Group). The moral choices and actions each adopt are recognisable and entirely reasonable. Though it takes a little too long to address the questions that the reader has asked early, the answers are satisfying enough.

Grief, marriage, childlessness, sisterhood, parenting, each get a good airing. So not just a page turning story but an emotional workout too.

Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood

The story opens in 2013 at a production of The Tempest by the Fletcher Correctional Players, the culmination of the latest course run at the prison by the English teacher, Mr Duke. It then rewinds thirteen years to when Mr Duke, then known as Felix Phillips, was the renowned lead actor and artistic director of the prestigious Makeshiweg Festival.

Felix is on a professional high, set to deliver a ground-breaking production of The Tempest, a project he has thrown himself into following personal tragedy – the death of his wife in childbirth and within three years the loss of his daughter (Miranda, naturally) to meningitis. This will be a tribute to them. However, the show is pulled, and he is ousted from his job by his more-than-able lieutenant, Tony Price, who takes over, usurps even, the role.

Felix, bereft of purpose, drifts away, goes off-grid, eventually re-inventing himself as Mr Duke. He gets a job in the education service at the local prison, establishing an acting class, which is surprisingly successful. So successful that the new Minister for Culture, one Tony Price, is coming to visit. An opportunity for revenge! thinks Felix.

The clever parallels to Shakespeare’s Tempest are deftly worked, while the play within the play gives scope for exploration of its themes (and their linkage to Felix). There is more, much more than can be outlined here, to admire and enjoy in this re-telling of the Bard’s play, written as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project.