Lady Macbeth's Daughter

 


Review of Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein


Overview from www.goodreads.com: Albia has grown up with no knowledge of her mother of her father, the powerful Macbeth. Instead she knows the dark lure of the Wychelm Wood and the moors, where she’s been raised by three strange sisters. It’s only when the ambitious Macbeth seeks out the sisters to foretell his fate that Albia’s life becomes tangled with the man who leaves nothing but bloodshed in his wake. She even falls in love with Fleance, Macbeth’s rival for the throne. Yet when Albia learns that she has the second sight, she must decide whether to ignore the terrible future she foresees—or to change it. Will she be able to save the man she loves from her murderous father?  And can she forgive her parents their wrongs, or must she destroy them to save Scotland from tyranny?

In her highly anticipated follow-up to Ophelia, Lisa Klein delivers a powerful reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, featuring a young woman so seamlessly drawn it seems impossible she was not part of the Bard’s original play.

My Review:

Double, double, toil and trouble boil out the cauldron in this retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth but with a twist. Macbeth and his lady have a daughter.

After being promised by an old hag soothsayer that he will have lots of sons, Macbeth, thane of Moray, flies into a rage when a daughter with a deformed leg is born to him and Lady Grelach (Macbeth). He orders the girl killed and thus begins the descent of the Macbeth’s marriage into the abyss.

Unbeknownst to either parent however, Lady Macbeth’s maid Rhuven saves the child, giving her to her sister to raise her. They name her Albia. She grows up not knowing her true origin and wondering about her family’s connection to the later King Macbeth.

This story is somewhat short as it is a YA Historical Fiction story but that does not mean that it is lacking. The interjection of Albia into the story works very well. I don’t want to spoil the ending but Albia herself becomes part of the story so that she seems as likely as the others to be a character in this play. It is as though she belonged in this story all along and was accidently omitted by the Bard. She fits in that well.

I am not sure however that I liked the witch characters all that much, the others that is. Sure they saved Albia’s life but with the exception of her adopted mother, they always seem to be up to some mischief. They want to tinker with fate and sometimes it seems that they are cruel to other characters when they do it.

I love Albia’s story however and since she features strongly in the plot, I kept reading. I would highly recommend this story to anyone with an interest in the Shakespeare play or Medieval Scotland in general. It also has some beautiful quotes. The only thing that saddened me about was that I found it at a dollar store. I don’t think it deserves to be there.

Contains: some violence and sexually suggestive scenes.


P.S. My apologizes for not posting a review last week. My personal life was crazy and I just didn't get to it.