This November I’m recommending a dark book for a dark month – Lady Macbeth by American author Ava Reid. Her novel was first published in 2024 and is easily available in paperback or as an ebook. The single-viewpoint narrative also works particularly well as an audiobook. This story is set in a version of 11th century Scotland and is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth (c.1606). In theatrical circles Macbeth is superstitiously referred to as the Scottish Play but I’ll risk the curse by not calling Reid’s book the Scottish Novel. If you are struggling to recall the exact plot of the Scottish Play don’t worry because this novel diverges from it in numerous ways.
Lady Roscille is an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Breizh (Brittany). When she is seventeen her father arranges for her to marry Macbeth, Thane of Glammis, one of his allies in Alba (Scotland). Roscille reluctantly travels to Alba with her handmaiden, Hawise. When they arrive in Glammis, both girls are veiled so it isn’t initially clear which of them is the bride. Roscille is used to wearing a veil to hide her unique pale beauty and her black eyes which are renowned for driving men to madness. Phrases such death-touched, poison-eyed and witch-kissed are whispered about Roscille but she is the one who is frightened after a gruesome Druid wedding ceremony and the discovery that Hawise has been sent away or even killed.
Roscille is desperate to put off sleeping with her intimidating new husband so she invokes an ancient custom that in Alba a man may only share a bed with his bride after he has granted her three wishes. Her first wish is for a gold necklace. Roscille knows that the nearby Thane of Cawdor has gold-mines and hopes that Macbeth will be defeated trying to seize them. Macbeth is happy to invade his neighbour’s territory but he involves Roscille in a plot to implicate the Thane of Cawdor as a traitor to King Duncane of Alba. Roscille is also shown one of Macbeth’s darkest secrets. He keeps three witches chained up in a dungeon beneath the castle of Glammis and consults them for prophecies. The witches promise that Macbeth will soon be Thane of Cawdor.
Macbeth rides off to war with his leading ally, Thane Banquho, leaving Banquho’s young son Fleance in charge of Glammis. Fleance is angry about not being included in the war-band so Roscille tries to win his friendship by encouraging him to pretend that he has heroically rescued her from kidnappers. This false story makes Macbeth paranoid about traitors amongst his own people when he returns from defeating Cawdor. Roscille puts off her wedding night with another wish – for a cloak made up of the fur of six different white animals – but cannot avoid a visit from Alba’s ruling family. She is afraid of King Duncane because he is known for his venomous hatred of witchcraft and she soon realizes that there is something very strange about Duncane’s oldest son, Prince Lisander. Roscille also discovers that she is Macbeth’s second wife but nobody will tell her what happened to the first Lady Macbeth.
After the three witches proclaim that Macbeth will be King Hereafter, he uses Roscille’s dangerous beauty like a dagger, compelling her to take part in the murder of King Duncane. When Roscille is ordered to seduce and kill Prince Lisander, things do not go to plan. Macbeth seizes the throne but one prince has escaped and the other may not be a prisoner for long. Roscille endures mental cruelty and physical brutality and begins to fight against her wicked role as Lady Macbeth. Is Roscille doomed or might she have unexpected allies?
Reid prefaces her novel with a glossary of place names and a scholarly note about the various languages which were spoken in Western Europe during the 11th century. This gives the misleading impression that Lady Macbeth is going to be straightforward Historical Fiction but that is far from the case. If you are looking for a meticulously researched Historical novel about Macbeth, try Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter (1982) instead. Reid draws on Shakespeare and his source materials and on Fairy Tales and early Medieval literature to create a sinister version of Scotland in which you can meet dragons and unicorns as well as powerful witches. Like Shakespeare, she also incorporates elements inspired by the reign of witch and woman-hating King James VI and 1(1566-1625).
One of the merits of this book was that it inspired me to reread the Scottish Play and revel in Shakespeare’s gory and glorious language. I have always been fascinated by the Macbeths who, in the early part of the play, are depicted as an unusually devoted couple. They are driven apart as their reactions to their joint crimes begin to diverge. Macbeth’s own acts plunge him into a vividly expressed nihilistic view of the world in which nothing can matter any more. Ambitious Lady Macbeth, who initially seems the main instigator, cannot live with the reality of the murders she has helped to commit or escape from her guilt. Even so, turning Lady Macbeth into a sympathetic heroine is no easy task. Yet Reid has managed to slant the story in ways which caused me to care about Roscille and her fate.
Reid has made her Lady Macbeth very young, as most new brides would be at this period. At the start of the novel Roscille is emotionally immature and doesn’t always understand the consequences of her actions or take responsibility for them. She does not at first think about the number of people who may die because she has incited Macbeth to attack his neighbour. Of course Macbeth doesn’t really need inciting and he, and other men, use Roscille’s alleged witchcraft as an excuse for their own base desires. This is victim-blaming taken to extremes. Reid chooses to show that Roscille is living in cultures which offer little power or protection to women. Roscille pities her enslaved Norse handmaiden but she herself has few freedoms. She feels betrayed by her adored father, who has used her as a pawn in his political schemes, and in Alba Roscille is subject to coercion and violence by men who despise her. Her attempts to harm Macbeth are like the instinctive struggles of an animal caught in a trap.
Reid’s eerie depiction of the grim fortress of Glammis on the bleak edge of civilization has echoes of that darkest of Fairy Tales – Bluebeard’s Castle. The new bride is deliberately separated from the company and comforts of her own gender and isolated amongst callous men. Noble characters in the Scottish Play, such as Duncan or Banquo, become treacherous brutes in this version of the story. Roscille is attracted to the one man who genuinely offers to help her but that is partly because he wears his monster on the outside. When the Scottish Play is performed on stage, the Weird Sisters and their rhyming spells can be hard to take seriously. In Reid’s novel the three blind witches, shackled together in a cold and semi-flooded dungeon, seem horrifyingly and heartbreakingly real. Even in this state, they manage to manipulate events and turn Macbeth’s ruthless ambition into a weapon that will destroy him.
I have tagged Lady Macbeth as Dark Fantasy but wondered if I should place it in the new subgenre of Grim-Dark Fantasy. Reid certainly likes to create extremely grim scenarios for her heroines to struggle against. Her 2021 Fantasy novel The Wolf and the Woodsman is one of the most horrific and distressing books I’ve ever read and yet it has a kind of happy ending which allows the publishers to market it as an Enemies into Lovers romance. I know from my own experiences with publishers that they don’t trust female readers to cope with cathartic tragic endings. Instead, everything must finish on a positive note with the heroine finding happiness through a new career, a new love or sisterly friendship. Ultimately, Lady Macbeth is a hopeful story, lacking in the cynicism and despair which characterizes true Grim-Dark Fantasy. Roscille does build bonds with other oppressed women in Glammis, a process I found more convincing than the love story element of the plot. I understand the impulse to change the destinies of tragic heroines but it is the trapped and desperate Lady Macbeth of Reid’s early chapters who will linger in my memory. Until next month….
Geraldine
November 2025