Let me start this review by saying how much I LOVE Shakespeare's Hamlet and how excited I was to see more into the character of Ophelia. But after that, this story did not leave me feeling like I gained any important new understanding of her character...blech.So the book details the life of Ophelia and lets just say I only really liked the parts that stayed true to the original play. Klein adds in her backstory, Hamlet's courtship, and above all what happens to her afterwards. Of course, Ophelia faked death (think Juliet) and ran away to a convent where she later gave birth to Hamlet's son -- not illegitimate mind you, because they had previously married in secret. It's more than a little stretched. I didn't love how in depth they described her time spent in a convent, learning about the lord and the other sisters there. Frankly, I didn't see that it added anything to the story. But I did enjoy the parts that fit in with the original play and enjoyed the suppositions of the other minor characters in the play. It just feel a little flat anytime she digressed. Sad, I know -- I wanted to like this book, I really did. Although it does make me want to go back and read the play, which I think is a good quality in any book -- intentional or not. ( )

Reviewed by Marta Morrison for TeensReadToo.com

This book blew me away. It is the re-imagining of the story of Ophelia, from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. In the play, Ophelia is in love with Hamlet and ends up committing suicide because of his treatment of her and because he killed her father. Her character is a woman who is ruled by the thoughts and deeds of men. It is their deeds and rules that affect her and bring about her demise. In this story, Ophelia is a very strong character and we see the story of Hamlet through her eyes.

She is the daughter of Polonius, a foolish man who courts favor of those in power. She is motherless and her only other family is her brother, Laertes. Her childhood, though, is very happy because she is a tomboy and is free to learn beside her brother. She has a lot of freedom, which is rarely given to girls at this time. Her father is given a job in the court of the King of Denmark, and she has to leave this idyllic time and enter into a drafty, gloomy place. In fact, it is described as a prison and a place of intrigue and sadness.

Within a few years she is brought to the attention of Queen Gertrude and is made into a lady of the court. She also attracts the attention of Prince Hamlet. She and the Prince fall in love and are secretly married. The King's ghost appears on the night of their marriage, and Hamlet is obsessed with revenge. Ophelia has to sail through court politics to secure her place and her sanity.

Lisa Klein has interwoven lines from the play in the story and the main story stills stands, but by the end we know what happens to Ophelia. There is a lot of philosophical musings in the story about a woman's place compared to a man's, what is sin, forgiveness, obedience and God's will in ones life.

I think the story compelled me to see the play again and to have a happier vision of the character of Ophelia. I strongly recommend this book and you don't have to know Hamlet to read it. I do believe that to read this alongside the reading of Hamlet would be beneficial to the understandings and themes in this tragedy. ( )

The Little Bookworm

In Hamlet, Ophelia is a strange creature. Seemingly in love with Hamlet and driven to madness by the death of her father at Hamlet's hands, she is suddenly gone from the story. But what is the true story of Ophelia's madness and how deep did her feeling for Lord Hamlet go? Ophelia explores her background and the true story of Ophelia's love affair with the Danish prince.

Ophelia is one of my favorite Shakespearean characters. I've always been fascinated by her. When I was in 12th grade and we read Hamlet and had to do a project, I made a chart of her flowers and their meanings. It was her character that got me interested in flower language. But it was always a mystery of her real relationship to Hamlet. It seems like they were in love or, at least courting, but you never get the full background on the situation. In Ophelia, Klein gives a full back story to Ophelia and her relationship with Hamlet. Ophelia's story starts when she was 12 and her family moves to the castle and she first sees the little Prince Hamlet. And it shows their developing relationship and her part in his play on madness and revenge scheme after the death of his father. I liked the idea that Ophelia both understood and didn't understand what was going on with Hamlet. And that she tried to help at first, but his madness made her question everything. I thought the ending was really good. Although the book was slow in parts, it was well written using the language style of the play without being too hard to read. The only complaint may be, if you haven't read the play, then parts of this might be hard to understand as somethings are glossed over.

*begin spoilers*

I liked the idea that Ophelia doesn't actually die, but fakes her death à la Juliet and lives on in a convent. So she actually does get herself to a nunnery. And she gives birth to Hamlet's son which is so wonderful and that Horatio finds her and probably marries her since it was obvious he loved her all along. I'm not too sure how I feel about her and Hamlet marrying secretly, but it moves parts of the story along.

*end spoilers*

What was really going on with the character Ophelia, in the play Hamlet? This novel takes us behind the scenes to show us what happened to her, and how things played out after the play ended. ( )

The continuation of the story of Hamlet's Ophelia. The characterizations are really well done and the story line is interesting. The plausible idea of Ophelia faking her death makes for a very interesting twist on the Shakespeare tale. Add the birth of Hamlet's son and the hint of romance at the very end with Horatio and it is a very satisfying read.

Readers will want to read the original play to see how it all fits together and find the actual words that were either paraphrased or in quotes in this tale.

This would be a worthy addition to the list.

Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, is practically required reading for every English student. But how much is really known about Ophelia, Hamlet’s “girl,” who goes mad and commits suicide in the original play?

Lisa Klein offers us a different perspective on the undeveloped Shakespearean character. Ophelia is a strong-willed and beautiful young woman living in the often treacherous world of court intrigue. For the most part shunned and used by her father and brother, the once tomboyish and willful Ophelia grows into a lady with wit and passion under the wings of court women such as Queen Gertrude. Yet she sometimes feels separate from the rest of the ladies when they speak of things such as love and marriage.

That is, of course, until she crosses paths with Prince Hamlet. Their attraction for one another is undeniable, and Ophelia soon finds herself spiraling downwards into love. But when, after the suspicious death of his father the king, Hamlet’s passion for Ophelia turns into a dreadful passion for revenge, Ophelia must carve out her own path, with or without her love, if she wants to live.

It is refreshing to have one of Shakespeare’s usually passive female characters retold as a strong personality. Ophelia is very much a modern woman stuck in the early seventeenth century; you can find hearty doses of feminism and religious zeal in many passages throughout. Supporting characters, however, are incompletely sketched, and I never felt any real connection with Ophelia and Hamlet’s love for one another.

About half of the book focuses on what actually occurs in the play; the rest is about Ophelia’s attempt to survive away from Elsinore. Because she ends up at a convent, the second half of the book is very much focused on religion and finding peace with oneself, so much so that at times it can begin to sound preachy. Likewise, Ophelia seemed to approach the reliving of her past at arm’s length, and that, I think, unfortunately detracted from the story’s intimacy and appeal.

Overall, however, Ophelia is an interesting way to reapproach a familiar piece of literature. If you’re looking for something pro-feminism with period language that sounds genuine, pick this one up. ( )

http://keriansthoughts.blogspot.com/2... ( )

Founded around a series of what-ifs. What if Ophelia's death was in fact a Romeo-and-Juliet type attempt to get away from the troubles that beset her relationship with Hamlet and in fact she survived to tell her tale? In fact this story mostly reads like Hamlet meets Romeo and Juliet and finishes with a happy ending.

Overall it was interesting to have some of the dialogue from the original interspersed with the story and a greater development of the character of Ophelia but overall it was a bit ho-hum. ( )

It's a good and an easy way to learn Shakespeare's play and to understand how the royal court works. The romance between Ophelia, Prince Hamlet and Horatio lends an interesting twist to the story. I think that the author could have made her minor characters stronger, fox example, Edmund and Polonius. There wasn't too much information on Polonius. Edmund was more or less a cameo appearance. Ophelia was portrayed wonderfully as having developed through the various stages that she was thrown into. The latter part of the story was most informative regarding life in a convent and reasons as to why some people are thrown into this type of lifestyle. ( )

So disappointing. I loved the idea of seeing things from Ophelia's perspective and I loved that this was a teen book, since Ophelia is considered one of the first teen heroines in literature. But the execution is painfully slow and boring. The story and the ultimate drama never come to life. It was hard to get through and I haven't thought about it much since. ( )

Ophelia is the motherless child of an absent father. To keep her occupied, he allows Ophelia the privilege of learning alongside her brother, something uncommon in the fourteenth century. When Ophelia turns eight, her father takes a position with the king, moving the family to the castle’s grounds. Life is very different from her small village routine, but Ophelia and her brother soon befriend the similar aged prince. As Ophelia grows into a strong-minded and beautiful young lady, the queen takes note of her many talents and makes her a favored attendant of the court. The prince also notices the beautiful Ophelia and they begin a love story in secret, as their match would not be deemed acceptable. With the help of the prince’s most trusted friend, they marry in secret.

And so begins the parallel tale of Ophelia, the girl Shakespeare gave us in brief and tragic form, reinvented. As the story continues we see Shakespeare’s Hamlet unfold. The king is murdered, his brother the murderer, much death and sadness until Prince Hamlet lay dead. But just as our story began long before Shakespeare’s invention, our story doesn’t end there either. Klein offers further invention on what happened after the stage renders its mass of dead bodies, but I’ll leave the ending unrevealed only offering that the story does not end in tragedy here.

This is a wonderful story to use as a jumping board for Hamlet. The reader need not be familiar with the original in order to enjoy this story and I suspect many a young reader will want to rush off for a copy of Hamlet once finished. Klein stays within the original timeline, adding Ophelia’s point of view before, during, and after the mayhem. She gives Ophelia a modern voice, yet retains the Shakespearean speaking patterns.

Some reviewers have taken offense to Klein’s messing with the original, but it is important to remember the intended audience. I suspect those who’ve taken offense are not fans of parallel fiction (a HUGE genre right now) anyway. A reader must be ready to lay preconceived notions aside when reading parallel fiction.

This is not to say the title is without some issues. The ending is certainly Disneyesque, but again I must defer to the intended audience of young adults and their ideas on love. I did have a few continuity questions in regard to Ophelia’s actions, even though Hamlet’s continuity is certainly something Shakespeare, himself, was toying with in his original.

Highly recommended as a jumping off point for the study of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for those enjoying parallel fiction and those keen on courtly tales.

Review first published on Reading Rumpus
© Tasses 2007-2009

An in-depth version of the story of Hamlet, told from Ophelia's point of view, with some artistic liberties. The writing seamlessly includes lines from the original play, while adding so much more in terms of detail. Focusing on the female characters, this is a good read for fans of the play. ( )

http://talesofarampaginglibrarian.blo... ( )

She loves hamlet and runs away. What happens to her life? She finds a safe home. She makes good friends with Horatio. ( )

Entertaining take

on Hamlet. Ophelia

is not mad or dead. ( )

Lisa Klein's Ophelia is a tightly-written, pacey and lively spin-off of Hamlet in novel form, as told from (you guessed it) Ophelia's perspective. The plot begins years before Hamlet's timeline and ends years after, allowing for Ophelia's character to be drawn out much more fully from Shakespeare's sketchy and puzzling portrayal.

Klein chose to set the novel not in the period of Hamlet's Denmark, but in the period of Shakespeare's writing of the play. Interwoven with the plot of Hamlet are allusions to a number of contemporary works, including Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It, in addition to conceits from sonnets by (among others) Lady Mary Wroth, all against a backdrop of romance, conduct literature, hagiography and other genres for and about women.

The fact that Ophelia is a woman allows Klein to intersperse a range of historical detail appropriate to women, including negotiations with cultural requirements for chastity, obedience and silence and a rich tapestry of herbal lore (as suggested by Ophelia's preoccupation with flowers in Hamlet). The characters' language is also suggestive of early modern literary dialogue.

However, these scholarly elements are by no means overpowering: the novel walks a careful line, never losing track that it is first and foremost a modern romance targeted at teenagers and enjoyable by a wide readership without specialist knowledge. Whether intentional or not, it's a story that's crying out for a film.

A retelling of Hamlet, with Ophelia as our narrator. From her point of view we see the intrigues and plots within Elsinore, her love for Hamlet, and in this version of the story, we find out how Ophelia escaped with her life, while all of her loved ones perished. ( )

The story of Hamlet, told from Ophelia's point of view ( )

Ophelia is strong-willed and doesn't kill herself in this novel. Hamlet seems like a crazy idiot.

In a story based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia tells of her life in the court at Elsinore, her love for Prince Hamlet, and her escape from the violence in Denmark. ( )