Homegoing and Vinegar Girl

These two books don't have much in common except that they are part of a set.  Homegoing was one of the Tournament of Books selections this year, and Vinegar Girl is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project in which modern popular authors tackle retelling some of Shakespeare's plays.

I knew I wanted to read Homegoing from the moment I heard about it and saw its wonderful, vibrant, promising cover. I've made a conscious effort to read more slave stories as a way of trying to balance the >50 years in which I read none, but apart from that I loved the premise.  Basically, two half sisters in 18th century Africa who have never met are the genesis for two narratives--one girl remains in Africa as do her descendants, while the other is sold into slavery and her descendants are part of the American experience.

This was a fascinating way to travel both lines through history, and I really enjoyed hearing about both sets of stories and people equally.  The writing was excellent--powerful, straightforward, and flexible, meaning that I was impressed that the author, Yaa Gyasi, was able to give each character a unique voice that made him/her memorable as an individual.

Homegoing rates as one of the best books I've read so far this year.  Interestingly, in the Tournament of Books, Underground Railroad was named the champion, and Homegoing came in second.  It's all opinion, but while both are 5-star books, I preferred Homegoing.  Maybe it's the span of time, the richness and variety of characters and stories, some that intersect and some that don't.  I found Homegoing the more satisfying novel, though both were equally thought-provoking and powerful.

Compared to Homegoing, Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler was pretty fluffy.  Here's what I wrote for my GoodReads review:

Wish that I could give this weird book another half star [I gave it 3]. It's a weird book because the basic storyline is pretty hard to work with as anyone who has seen Taming of the Shrew will tell you. Tyler does an okay job with modernizing the premise of a "Vinegar Girl" (i.e., a sharp-tongued, no nonsense woman) needing to get married, which is not an easy task--really, no one "needs" to get married these days, but Tyler came up with a reasonable reason. My main problem with the book is that Tyler's setting is contemporary Baltimore but the total feel of the setting is "Leave it to Beaver" land. The setting is so anachronistic that it's unsettling.

For example, there are no 2017 parents who would send their children to the preschool where Kate works as Tyler describes it--the parents sound modern, but the teachers and aides are completely unrealistic. Makes me wonder if Tyler has been in a 21st century preschool. And the notion that "everyone" started treating Kate differently when she announced her engagement because she was no longer doomed to be a single woman is preposterous.

But, and here's what saves the book for me, Tyler dealt in a wonderful way with that awful speech that Kate and her husband make at the end of Taming of the Shrew...it was so fitting and fun to read that I forgave Tyler for the weirdness of her anachronistic world.

Since I compared Homegoing to Underground Railroad, it's only fair that I compare Vinegar Girl with the other Shakespeare Project book that I've read so far, Hag-Seed.  They are light years apart. Hag-Seed was an interpretation of The Tempest and it made me look at the original, its themes and characters and plot, in a new way.  Vinegar Girl was a modernization with nothing really interesting or new to say about Taming of the Shrew. It was a fun read but not really memorable.

Hag-Seed

Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood's retelling of Shakepeare's The Tempest, came to my attention because it was on the long list of the Tournament of Books for 2017, and I wanted to read a few of the contenders early in the year.  It turns out that Hag-Seed is also part of the Hogarth Press's Shakespeare Project in which popular modern authors revisit some of Shakespeare popular plays and do a modern rendition.

Here's what the Hogarth Press has to say about this project:

For more than four hundred years, Shakespeare’s works have been performed, read, and loved throughout the world. They have been reinterpreted for each new generation, whether as teen films, musicals, science-fiction flicks, Japanese warrior tales, or literary transformations. The Hogarth Press was founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf in 1917 with a mission to publish the best new writing of the age. In 2012, Hogarth was launched in London and New York to continue the tradition. The Hogarth Shakespeare project sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today. The series launched in October 2015 and to date will be published in twenty countries.

Honestly, I don't often care for the results of projects like this, but since I really do like The Tempest I gave Hag-Seed a try, despite not much caring for the only other book I 've read by Atwood, The Blind Assassin.

Thankfully, it was worth the plunge.  I enjoyed everything about Hag-Seed.  I thought it imaginative, relevant, well-written with convincing characters and dialogue, and thoughtful.

The basic idea is that the Prospero character, Felix, is unfairly stripped of his director job at a Canadian theatre company, and goes into exile with the ghost of his dead daughter until circumstances provide him with the opportunity to teach his enemies a lesson and right the wrongs done to him.  The circumstances happen to be his staging of a production of The Tempest at a prison where he has been working as a literacy teacher, bringing Shakespeare to the inmates. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but the staging of the play is incredible.

There's a lot going on in Hag-Seed, and I'm not sure it would be nearly as enjoyable if I hadn't known The Tempest fairly well. I've read it multiple times and seen it on the stage three or four times, and seen several movie versions.  I hope they make a movie of this book, because I would absolutely love to see this production.

In addition to Felix and his set of inmates who play the rest of the characters--and his casting notes are priceless--I loved how Felix explained The Tempest, in the context of his own life.  What makes Shakespeare timeless is that reader after reader, generation after generation, can see their own situation in his words, and this book illuminates that beautifully.  Felix, teaching The Tempest in a prison because he is exiled from theatre company, has made imprisonment and revenge the major themes of his production. Half the time, reading Hag-Seed was like reading first rate lit crit, which I love to do.

Final note--I read part of the novel as an e-book and then checked out the audio version, and listened to part of it.  The reader's voice reminded me of Kevin Kline, who I think would be perfect in the role of Felix...should they ever make a movie of this marvelous book.

Has anybody else read any of the titles in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project? Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler's take on The Taming of the Shrew, has some appeal as does Shylock is My Name, by Howard Jacobson.