"Laertes"

Laertes by Carly Stevens

Pages: 213 Genre: historical fiction, retelling

Rating: 3.5 Star

Laertes Belleforest feels divided between his two very different lives: one as an academic in France and one as part of the royal Danish court, constantly overshadowed by Prince Hamlet. Now, in his final year at university, it's time for him to reconcile the two and figure out who he is. When tragedy strikes in Denmark, everything changes, and his purpose becomes less clear every day.

Set in 1920s Europe, this Hamlet retelling shifts the focus from the titular character to his foil as we explore what Ophelia's forgotten older brother may have been experiencing.

I'm a fan of every retelling of Hamlet, honestly, so there's a chance I'm just easy to please. But I really did enjoy reading this book. The dark academia vibes were excellent, it was certainly a unique perspective to explore, and I enjoyed the writing style a lot.

I really liked getting Laertes' point of view on the happenings of Hamlet. You miss a lot of the key moments from the play, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing — Laertes is missing for most of it, after all. And this story was focused on him, not Hamlet (the character); I think it would've been distracting to dedicate more time to Hamlet's story, and it would've defeated the point of shifting the narrative.

That being said, this book never felt fully committed to the idea of Laertes, the full character. Instead, we had Laertes the Hamlet Side Character and Laertes the Reimagined 1920s Tortured French Poet. His escapades in France felt entirely unrelated to his role in the play's plot, making it feel like we were just filling time between the Main Scenes. I would've appreciated the author building out Laertes as his own independent person and using the Tortured French Poet aspect to directly impact Laertes' actions within the main retold version of Hamlet. In reality, the whole book just seemed a little disjointed.

I also think the book needed more time to breathe. I get that Hamlet is told in a quick five acts, but this book was not tied to the same play structure that Shakespeare was. Putting the story in the 1920s already changed the context, so it wouldn't have been that disorienting to add some more scenes in at the end to really explore Laertes' thoughts and feelings.

The only part of the book I genuinely disliked was the awkwardly-written feminism. Laertes had a subplot that was basically realizing women are people, which was odd and unnecessary. And none of the female characters were written that well. There's only so much you can do for Ophelia in this case, but Josephine was an original character, and there's no justification for her.

You don't need to know the original play well in order to enjoy this book, but my established knowledge was definitely doing a lot of heavy lifting here; I enjoyed it primarily as a fan of Hamlet. And I think other Hamlet fans would feel the same. But we needed to let Laertes shine more.