Finding Grace, by Alyssa Brugman

Grace had a brain injury. That's just how she was.
She spent a lot of time sitting in her leather wing-backed chair just staring out the window. I didn't really know what was happening inside her head and I didn't really think about it.
I was eighteen and knew everything. Well, not everything, but I did know a great deal about a great many things. For example, I knew that time healed most wounds and those that it didn't you simply got used to.
That was before I met Grace or Mr Alistair Preston.

Rachel, just after finishing high school, gets a job as a live-in carer for a woman named Grace, who has an acquired brain injury. Grace can walk and eat, but Rachel has to make sure she goes to the loo, has to put her to bed and make sure she doesn't hurt herself.

At first Grace scares Rachel, with her blank stare, slack lips and drool, but soon Rachel comes to realise there is still someone in there, that Grace hasn't disappeared completely. It's so beautiful, every time I read this, to watch Rachel learn and question herself and her understanding of the world.

Mr Preston is Grace's lawyer, he's the one who picked Rachel. When he comes around he speaks to Grace lovingly, buys her shoes and very good wine - he doesn't treat her like everyone else does. His dedication and guilt and grief is heartbreaking.
Rachel is hilarious. She sings out loud as she walks down the street, uses a snorkel in her car because the windows hardly open and the radiator blows coolant in through the vents, she blushes horribly (frack - her attempts to hide the blush from the handsome boy she meets in her first uni lecture - I couldn't laugh enough!) and has an extremely unique perspective. I love her.

Mama Bear sent me this the year after I finished school, when I was working in Scotland, and it was so wonderful that I couldn't bear to part with it and it became part of the massive haul I brought with me when I came back. I don't remember when I met Alyssa Brugman, but I must have, and I also must have told her that story.

If you have not yet read this remarkable novel, then shame on you. Get thee to a library (or a bookshop). It has a very pretty new cover, which looks like this:

published by Allen&Unwin in 2006

"look like the innocent flower

but be the serpent under it." this is spoken by lady macbeth, macbeth, act 1 scene 5.

she's a brilliant character, lady macbeth. so twisted and evil and ready to assist her husband in his bloody ambition.

i read macbeth as a teenager as part of english class and it remains one of my favourite shakespeare plays. last week i read lisa klein's latest novel lady macbeth's daughter and it was fantastic, a wonderful companion to shakespeare's scottish play. plus i also love all things scottish, so perhaps i am biased.

the idea is this: that macbeth's wife grelach (whom he married after killing her first husband, to whom she was wed at 12, having her first child - a son, luoch - at age 13) gives birth to a daughter. macbeth is enraged - it turns out he had been told by the wyrd sisters that he would bear many strong sons. the daughter is born with a deformed foot. macbeth orders his man eadulf to leave the baby to the wolves. the babe is rescued by the queen's lady-in-waiting rhuven and she takes it to her sisters. they name her albia - innocence sprung from darkness.

the novel follows albia as she grows into a young woman, far from the zealously ambitious macbeth and his ever-assisting wife. of course their lives become inevitably re-entwined, and the reader meets the other famous characters of macbeth: banquo, duncan, malcolm and macduff. and she has fleshed out the female characters, given them a voice and a role. albia in particular (of course, being the heroine) is smart and strong, flawed but determined and compassionate.
all these characters are given extra story, back-story, and more character. it's wonderful, and so well done. it never feels anything like fan-fiction - klein's storytelling and characterisation is brilliant.

i love that the wyrd sisters are actually friendly and funny people, caring. they fool macbeth because they had been loyal to the previous thane - and because they can. macbeth hears whatever he wants to hear, twists the sisters' words to fit.

best of all, lady macbeth gets some more page-time. she's not simply the willing-assistant-turned crazy-remorse-woman, but she is grelach: wife and mother. she has emotions and thoughts and we get to know her. excellent.

klein has drawn this world so clearly and her characters were so accessible. i am sure that even someone who has not read macbeth will enjoy the book - maybe even more so because they do not know what is to come! i didn't read klein's previous book ophelia (based on shakespeare's hamlet, of course) but will certainly be seeking it out now.

and here are some photographs of scotland, from when i lived there:

here are some creepy woods in crieff, where i lived - about an hour or so from dunsinane, actually!
this is the view from the crieff knock:here is urquhart castle, near inverness (on loch ness):
this is inside of urquhart castle: