Title: Macbeth
Rating: 4 Stars
The Hogarth Shakespeare Project asks notable writers to re-imagine one of Shakespeare’s plays. Margaret Atwood has written Hagseed, her version of The Tempest. Anne Tyler has written Vinegar Girl, her version of The Taming of the Shrew. Other writers have taken on The Merchant of Venice and The Winter’s Tale. I’m particularly interested in the latter three because, for various reasons, all of those plays are kind of problematic in the twenty-first century. I’d like to see what a modern author does with it. A version of Hamlet is coming that will be written by Gillian Flynn, which is also something that I’ll be looking forward to.
Of the books currently available, I was most interested in Jo Nesbo’s version of Macbeth. Macbeth is one of my favorite works of Shakespeare and being somewhat of a Scandinavian crime fan, I’ve read most of Nesbo’s Harry Hole stories.
Nesbo does a good job integrating Macbeth into a crime noir. The story is set in a depressed town in 1970s Scotland. There was once industry there, but it’s long since been closed down. The town now runs on drugs, prostitution, and gambling. The government is corrupt. Even the weather is dank, dark, and miserable.
The current police commissioner is Duncan. Malcolm is his deputy. Duncan is on a crusade to clean up the government. Macbeth is head of SWAT. Banquo is his right hand man. Macbeth’s wife (named Lady) is the head of a casino and has ambitions to wipe out her main competitor and to run the city. Duff is head of the anti drug force. Hecate is the head of a large drug cartel and controls the city. He has three weird sisters that hold the recipe and together brew a new addictive drug. Hecate, deciding that Duncan is a thorn in his side to be removed, has the sisters go up to Macbeth and tell him that he should be the police commissioner.
If you already know the plot of Macbeth, I think that you’re seeing how all of this plays out. Nesbo does stay true to Shakespeare.
There are a couple of items of note. First of all, the play Macbeth is rife with magic and insanity. Here, Nesbo replaces essentially both of these with drugs. Both Macbeth and Lady become addicted to drugs at various points in the story and the addiction becomes a driving force through it. Hecate controls the entire town and drives most of the plot not because of some magical abilities so much as by the power that he acquires by being such a huge supplier of drugs to the town.
Another thing that I found interesting is that this total-war power struggle is going on over a town that is already nearly dead. This reminds me of the recent film Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Although it’s beautifully filmed, the Scotland of the film is a small, somewhat desolate place. Macbeth, at the beginning, is the Thane of Glamis, living in a windblown hamlet.
Similarly, in this book, the town that everyone is fighting for is pretty clearly dying. What beauteous riches will the conqueror really gain by taking over? Is it really worth the cost? And what a cost it is. Macbeth, an orphan, was saved from horrible abuse by his fellow orphan Duff, and then was raised by the person that eventually became his father figure, Banquo. He ends up ordering both of them dead. Duff’s attempted murder is especially horrific since the SWAT team guns down in cold blood his wife and children using two massive gatling guns.
I also found it interesting that Nesbo managed to include fully realized roles for even the minor characters in the play. Lennox, Seyton, Caithness, and Angus all play important roles here. One of the advantages of a novel over a play is that the writer does have the opportunity to put a bit more meat on the minor characters who have, at best, only a few lines in a play.
Having said all of that, one thing that does keep it from becoming five stars is that I do know, when all is done, how it will end. Obviously, that is a problem with this format. After being pretty true to the gritty realistic crime noir genre, at the end, it goes a bit over the top. You can make an argument that the play finishes similarly as well.
One final nit is kind of the awkward transition that Macbeth has to make from hero to villain. This is also true in the play as well. In the play, Macbeth goes from war hero willing to sacrifice his life for his king and country to pretty crazed slaughtering madman in very short order. This is a similarly abrupt transition.
This might be a case where a play is better than a novel. As I previously written, on the page, Othello’s transition is similarly problematic. He goes from hopelessly in love with Desdemona to I’m going to kill that bitch in about two pages of dialog. It’s unbelievable to read, but in the hands of a good actor, you find yourself carried away and convinced.
For me, Macbeth and Jo Nesbo was a happy marriage. Over time, I’ll probably read the other Hogarth novels. Hopefully, they’ll be similarly interesting and entertaining.
dorkenstein 