Miranda in Milan

January 15, 2019
A sequel to The Tempest, with Miranda cast as the heroine, Prospero as the villain, and a Moorish witch as Miranda's love interest.A thoughtful novelist might have taken this idea in many interesting directions. She might have tried to match the atmosphere of Shakespeare's great romance, weaving a tale of spirits and enchantment. She might have cast a hard eye on history, examining the workings of patriarchy and colonialism in her 17th-century Italian setting. She might have probed Miranda's psychology and that of her father. Or she might have explored a complex and sophisticated civilization through the eyes of an innocent seeing it for the first time. If Duckett intended to do any of those things, her debut novel shows little sign of it. The characters lack depth, and the writing lacks magic. As the story begins, The Tempest is over, and Miranda has returned to her native Milan with her father before setting out for Naples to marry Ferdinand. Nobody seems to like her much in Milan except a witch called Dorothea, who was born in Marrakech but for some reason is working at the ducal palace as a maidservant. Miranda may have fallen for Ferdinand, but that was only because she hadn't yet set eyes on the likes of Dorothea. (O brave new world!) Prospero storms around making pompous pronouncements and breaking his word: It turns out he never actually ditched his powers or drowned his books, and instead of forgiving his brother, the usurper Antonio, as he promised to do, he keeps him chained in the dungeon. Oppressive mysteries threaten vaguely. Miranda dreams of heaven: "Above her, the sky was endless and blue, a shade almost purpureal, cushioning flocculent clouds in its fathomless depths." Thankfully, such almost purpureal prose is rare; for the most part Duckett sticks to unobjectionably pedestrian language.The novel fails to explore its promising premise in any depth. Shakespeare this ain't.

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February 25, 2019
Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, navigates a haunted-house landscape of witchcraft, secrets, and abuse in Duckett’s gothic debut, a Tempest sequel that falls short of its progressive aims. Miranda is shunned for a ghostly resemblance to her mother, Beatrice, and her marriage to Ferdinand is delayed. She lurks, isolated, in Milan’s castle until she falls in love with Dorothea, a Marrakech-born servant and witch. Together, they unravel the mystery of Prospero’s exile and face his web of violent lies. Despite poetic prose, the narrative bogs down under arbitrary trauma-logic: circumstances and characterization—both Shakespeare’s and Duckett’s—warp to emphasize Miranda’s helplessness and desperation, yet a bit of minimal effort undoes the entire purportedly terrifying scheme. Dorothea is a perpetually patient and brown-skinned caretaker-lover for hapless white Miranda, and their off-puttingly unequal romance undermines the book’s postcolonialist talk; Miranda’s eventual moral growth can’t erase the exploitation of bedding the maid. Half rescue fantasy and half violent Gothic, this disturbing story forgets there’s more to love than being deemed not a monster. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary.

March 1, 2019

After her rescue in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda expected to live happily ever after in Naples with her love, Ferdinand. Instead, she finds herself in Milan, where everyone treats her like an outsider-she is forced to hide her face and is completely separated from everyone she has ever known and loved. Ferdinand never writes, her father is never present, and her "happy ever after" feels like a nightmare. Until she meets the enchanting-and magical-Dorothea, who awakens in her things that she never knew existed. The two of them try to uncover the mystery behind Miranda's mother's death and the plots of her father and perhaps find themselves along the way. Weaving magic back into Shakespeare's final work, this novel is filled with love, excitement, and mystery. Fans of the Bard will enjoy seeing familiar characters in new ways. Miranda leaps off of the page and will inspire readers to revisit the source material. At times the attempts to re-create Elizabethan phrasing feels inauthentic, but the story doesn't suffer for it. VERDICT Perfect for fans of Shakespeare curious about what happened to Miranda. Pair this with Tessa Gratton's darkly decadent The Queens of Innis Lear.-India Winslow, Cary Memorial Library, Lexington, MA

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2019
Since leaving the island of her childhood, the only home she has ever known, Miranda has found herself in a wider, much more daunting world. Her father, Prospero, has abandoned his books of magic spells and reclaimed his dukedom, while Ferdinand, the boy Miranda bound herself to on the island, is absorbed back into his life in Italy, his eyes on other girls. With the aid of Dorothea, the girl who comes to dress her, Miranda fights to shape herself into a girl Milanese society will accept. As her relationship with Dorothea intensifies, Miranda begins to learn more about the mother she so resembles?the mother who died when she was young, whose ghost still haunts the people of Milan. Picking up where Shakespeare's The Tempest left off, this brief, potent gem paints a complete portrait of Prospero's daughter?her past, her future, and her love?as it explores the full range of her voice. A glittering fantasy-romance that delves into the dark corners of human nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2019

In this speculative, queer twist on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda comes home to Milan but is not greeted as the prodigal child, soon-to-be queen of Ferdinand. Instead, as her father, Prospero, takes back control from her Uncle Antonio, Miranda becomes a virtual prisoner in the castle, treated as a monster. No one will talk to her, in fact, barely anyone can even look at her, and when she is taken out by her Aunt Agata, she is veiled or masked. But one maid, Dorothea, does not fear her. Dorothea shows Miranda the tunnels around the castle, and introduces her to feelings Miranda never imagined. As they explore the darkness, Miranda realizes there are secrets she has yet to uncover, and the truths may be more horrific than she ever imagined. It turns out that monsters and magic are real, but neither may be quite as expected. VERDICT This luxurious tale gives Miranda a path to self-discovery, wrapped in the dark magic and manipulations on display in the original play. Duckett turns this secondary character into a heroine on her own journey for truth.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.