Review: Ophelia by Lisa Klein | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
For Adele Geras the style of Lisa Klein's Ophelia spolied an otherwise fascinating read:
The language Klein uses is a problem at times. She scatters many quotations from Hamlet, and it's fun to spot them. On the other hand, she's trying to show us that everything is happening a long time ago, and this leads to a kind of grandiloquence, a stiffness and formality that make it hard on occasion to get close to the characters. This, for instance, is Ophelia talking to Hamlet: "In due season, all that lives returns to dust, making the earth fecund with life. Smell how the air tonight is pregnant with the flowers' blooms and their bee-sought sweetness." There are too many clich? and a plodding weight to the prose, but this won't stop readers revelling in a fascinating sidelight on Hamlet.
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