Lady Macbeth's Daughter

Lady Macbeth's Daughter
By Lisa Klein
Bloomsbury, 2009. 291 pgs. Young Adult

When Grelach, Macbeth's wife, gives birth to a daughter--and a lame one at that--Macbeth, who has been promised sons by the Wyrd sisters, is irate and sends the child off to be killed. However, one of the Wyrd sisters is Lady Macbeth's maid and she rescues the child (unbeknownst to either of her parents) and takes her home to be raised by her sisters. Albia, the child, has a relatively good childhood, not knowing her true parentage, but the Macbeths, as they are driven by ambition and the desire to rule Scotland, commit murder and send Scotland into an uproar and Albia is caught up in the madness.

This book is told mainly from Albia's point of view, with some chapters thrown in from Grelach's view point; I think those chapters are supposed to make her a sympathetic character, but for me, it didn't work, perhaps because Lady Macbeth has always been one of my least favorite of Shakespeare's characters. I did like Albia, however, along with the touch of romance that she encounters. There were a couple things that were left open-ended at the end of the book, but overall, it's an interesting twist on the story of Macbeth.

AE