HAG-SEED by Margaret Atwood

I love most of Margaret Atwood’s stuff, but this book is a little too offbeat for me.  Felix is a theatre festival director whose renderings of Shakespeare’s plays have become increasingly more outlandish.  He finds himself abruptly out of a job when his acolyte, Tony, who has been usurping his power a little at a time, boots him out, before Felix’s latest project, The Tempest, comes to fruition.  Felix then becomes a slightly deranged recluse in an out-of-the-way shack for a dozen years, imagining that his dead daughter lives with him.  Opportunity knocks with an offer to teach literacy at a medium security prison.  Felix accepts, with the caveat that he will teach Shakespeare and direct the inmates in a different play every year, and Felix’s kooky production style is well-suited for enactment by his incarcerated players.  Then another improbable opportunity arises when Tony and friends plan to abolish the prison literacy program, not knowing that Felix is at the helm.  They plan a visit to the prison, and Felix stages an immersive production of The Tempest during their visit in order to exact the revenge he has been wanting for years.  This is where things go a little haywire with regard to believability.  Granted, this novel parallels The Tempest, which is full of spells and spirits, but convincing inmates to drug visiting dignitaries is far-fetched, to say the least.  For me, a book this wacky is not in Atwood’s wheelhouse.