REVIEW: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid
Ava Reid dips her quill into Shakespeare’s ink pot, adopting the concept of one of his most famous villains, Lady Macbeth. In Reid’s reimagining of the story, Lady Macbeth, she gives voice to Roscille, the bastard-child of a French Lord, as she is sent off to Scotland to wed Lord Macbeth in a politically arranged marriage. Her presence unsettles the castle, and everyone in it, as Roscille is ‘witch-touched’, with hair as pale as her skin, and a stigma attached to her that claims she can control the minds of men, inciting madness within them through mere eye contact alone. Once married, Roscille discovers that her husband is more than just a man of brute force, as he plays a game of prophecies and secrets that he keeps from his court. Lady Macbeth retains the dark, gothic and atmospheric elements from the source material, but bends the story to accommodate her version of Roscille’s tales and origin story. This feminist twist on a famous male-centered story is a refreshing addition to Ava Reid’s already impressive repertoire of works.
It is important to emphasise that you will not find the duplicitous and conniving Lady Macbeth from the original script here, who bent her husband’s will to her own. Instead, you’ll find a younger rendition of Lady Macbeth, naïve, but still with a sharp eye for survival. Similarly, you’ll find that Macbeth is not as malleable as his namesake from the original but is instead more vigilant about his desire to gain power. As the bastard daughter of a French Lord, Roscille is familiar with her position at court, and how she is expected to live adjacent to a power-hungry man. I particularly enjoyed how Roscille would use this to her advantage, feigning “I am just a woman”, whenever a plan of hers slipped up. She masks herself from the rest of the court, metaphorically and literally in order to survive. For this reason, Roscille is mostly covered by a veil, one that feels both like a barrier of protection against those around her, as well as a cage of her own.
Reid writes eloquently, and with a smooth and fluid grace; her prose fits so perfectly well with the gothic elements of the story. Lady Macbeth felt haunting but had a flippant lightness to it that eased the heaviness of the story. This was mostly reflected in the small romantic elements that flitted throughout the novel. The pacing of the book was initially steady, and easy to indulge in, until the end, when the plot became quite rushed and ultimately created an ending that almost felt too easy. Fantastical elements within the novel do exist, especially the expected appearance of Shakespeare’s three witches and their prophecies, as well as Reid’s addition of Roscille’s madness-inciting stare. Whilst these appropriately slot into the pockets of this story as a whole, there is a particular fantastical element that simply does not. I cannot delve into it properly without potentially spoiling the book, but once you’ve read it, you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to here. It was definitely an aspect of the story that took me by surprise, and not pleasantly, and almost directed the story down a juvenile turn.
I greatly enjoyed this reimagining and hope that Reid continues to indulge in twisting great literary pieces into her own style. I think it suits her well. For grimdark readers that enjoy a lurid exploration of monarchies, court-life and politics, with a hint of romance, Lady Macbeth would be a great addition to your list. This was the first Ava Reid book I’ve read, and it will most certainly not be the last.
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