Hag-Seed

Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood's take on The Tempest, part of Random House's retelling of Shakespeare's plays.
The lead character, Felix Philips (aka the multi-faceted vengeful Prospero of the play), is an avant-garde theatre director of the Makeshiweg Festival, who finds himself cruelly booted out of job by his ambitious underling, on the eve of what would be the grand debut of his version of The Tempest. Without a job and and a family, the middle-aged Felix hides away in a derelict cottage, where he plots revenge and mourns his dead daughter, Miranda.
His chance for vengeance comes after a dozen or so years when he gets a job directing inmates of a prison. His revenge takes shape in the form of a staging of The Tempest that he puts on for the benefit of the man who ousted him, now a government bigwig.
While all this is going on, he keeps seeing his dead daughter and talks to her as if she was still alive. These scenes are touching and poignant, though at some point even Felix himself realises he could be losing his mind with grief.
The narrative is often humorous, but always with compassion and sympathy for the characters. The structure is inventive, containing as it does a plot that follows the play, and a play contained within the plot that enables the author and readers to explore Shakespeare's work. Any fan of Shakespeare would be doubly delighted.
Hag-Seed was unexpectedly entertaining, emphasising as it does the unexpected dark turns that real life can take, and how one can learn - perhaps - to let go of pain and emerge with some light still inside.