Shakespeare’s plays are very malleable and transportable. I have seen “King Lear” done as Eskimos in the Arctic, and Richard Burton performed “Hamlet” in modern dress, a black turtleneck, in fact. So: Hamlet might be played as a werewolf. Hamlet’s friends and family certainly know there is something very wrong with him. He’s behaving strangely, for sure.
Set in Los Angeles, narrated by Angus Gettelefinger, who turns ten in the story, Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s new novel is in part amusing, but not altogether. Angus is a nice, intelligent boy, a little odd but with a good heart. He’s forgetful. The opening line of the story is “Anybody can forget to wear shoes to school… It’s an innocent mistake. And I didn’t forget my trumpet. Why doesn’t that count?”
Angus has two sisters and they get along in a normal tempestuous family way, but he has always been very close to his older brother, Liam, now 15. But Liam’s behavior has changed in the last few months and there are clearly problems. Liam claims to be going to the library to study or to practice with his band, the Silver Lake Dahls. The band is real but that obsession is not the problem.
Liam sneaks out their bedroom window, after bedtime, sometimes staying out until 2 or 3, or even all night. He is clearly drinking a lot, mostly blackberry brandy, and also developing a taste for marijuana and pills, all kinds. He lies constantly to cover his bad behavior. He does not sprout hair all over and howl at the moon, but his personality is changing, becoming surly, irritable and remote.
Angus, worried sick, wants his brother back--the old friendly Liam. He concocts a scheme to stage an abbreviated version of “Hamlet” for his fifth-grade project—a “Hamlet” in which the prince is transformed into a werewolf. He must persuade his reluctant teacher, Mrs. Laudermilk, who steadily employs that most irritating of words, “inappropriate,” and convince his friends Zora and Connor, a recent transfer from Birmingham, Alabama, to take parts. As with the play-within-a-play in “Hamlet,” Angus hopes when Liam sees the changed, grotesque Hamlet there will be a shock of recognition and perhaps the beginning of recovery.
Meanwhile, the family as a whole is under stress. Dad is now a dental hygienist who had given up aspirations to be an actor. The family is broke. Eviction from their home looms. Mom, harried by a host of problems, also knows that a tendency to addiction runs in her family and Liam could be headed for real trouble.
Madden-Lunsford is a skilled, sophisticated fiction writer. This novel may be intended for young people but there is nothing juvenile about it. It is serious, frightening, and the problems are terribly real. Syntax, vocabulary, characterization, action are all engaging and held my attention throughout.
