Miranda in Milan, Katharine Duckett
I liked Miranda in Milan more than I expected from the reviews I saw around before I read it — I was curious, but not wildly interested, and mostly just picked it up now because I’m reading a lot of short fiction because that’s what’s working for my brain. And it turns out… I really liked it. I started reading it and figured I’d have to stop halfway through for work; halfway through, I damned work and carried on until I was finished.
It’s a semi-retelling, semi-sequel to The Tempest; a retelling because it plays with some of the facts and embellishes them, a sequel because it’s set after the play. It follows Miranda after she and Prospero return to Milan. The servants whisper about her, and she’s forced to wear a black veil to hide her face, but luckily a young Moroccan servant is happy to talk to her and explain things to her. They quickly become close, and this develops (fairly quickly) into a romantic relationship. I’m a little nonplussed by reviews feeling it came out of nowhere; I didn’t actually remember this was f/f, and was hoping for the romance to happen from the first hints of it.
It’s probably a good thing I read Jacqueline Carey’s Miranda and Caliban quite a while now, because the prose would suffer in comparison! As it is, I found it worked well for me: I wouldn’t say it’s going to stick in my head for beauty, but it succeeded in conjuring an atmosphere for me.
It all resolves a little simply and in the way I kind of expected, and I do appreciate the criticism that Prospero has no complexity and is basically a big evil bogeyman — though I also appreciated the way Miranda had to go over her memories and figure out where the lies and gaps were. It’s a little realistic hint of an abusive relationship that rang very true. Agata could have been just completely horrible, too, so I enjoyed that we got to see another side of her and understand a little of her bitterness and fear.
All in all, it worked really well for me; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I thought this one was okay, didn’t like it as much as you did, but you bring up a good point about Carey’s Miranda and Caliban! I think subconsciously I was comparing the two, and truly the prose and story can’t compare.
I think tearing through it in one sitting helped, too — I don’t know if I’d have liked it so much if I hadn’t just breeeeezed through it (in the space of one bubble bath, heh). Not too much time to pick at it!
Good to hear – I just ordered a copy of this last week. I haven’t read Carey’s retelling, so it’ll be interesting to see how this reads without that comparison in the back of my head.
Bob @ She Leads he Reads recently posted…Stacking the Shelves
Hmm, yeah, I would be interested to hear about that!