Lady Macbeth

I was so excited to read this novel which promised to be a retelling in the vane of Madeline Miller’s Circe. Boy was I disappointed.

This roughly nine-hour audiobook (320 pages in hardcover) reduced my favorite female baddy to a hand-wringing, too-beautiful-for-her-own-good, virginal waif who was married to a brute who could never understand her. Ugh!

I am all for feminist retellings when they have some nuance to add to the story, but this had nothing to add. Instead, it took too much away. In the original Shakespeare play, Lady Macbeth is the queen of conniving and lives by the “Oh, I’ll just do it myself” motto. This evil-doing drives her mad in the end and she takes her own life after she is consumed by guilt over being worried about getting caught.

Through the narrative device, we are privy to her thoughts, which show her to be scared of her own shadow. She is stripped of her cunning mind and just weak. It’s hard to believe that she will have the courage of her convictions to meet her end as she did in the play because she has no real driving force.

Also, Macbeth keeps the weird sisters locked up in his basement.

2/5 Stars