Come Like Shadows

by Welwyn Wilton Katz

The re-release of this much-loved title will cause celebration by the millions of fans of the author, illustrator, and the Scottish play.

Sixteen-year-old Kinny O'Neil lands a dream job at the famed 'Stratford Theatre Festival' in Ontario, assiting in the summer production of "Macbeth". It becomes nightmarish when the head witch is killed at rehearsal. Is "Macbeth" really cursed? An antique prop mirror seems to have a hold on Kinny and strangely, so does the new witch. Bad luck continues as the play tours Scotland. There, Kinny must face a magical threat as old as the country itself.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Young Adult, Childrens

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Everyone has interests. Some people like my father had very few but he knew everything about them and received an OBE for the work he did on one of them during the second world war. Obviously this anecdote shows that having only a few interests isn't a bad thing. However, sometimes I think that the more things people are interested in, the more chance they have of becoming a traditionally published author. For example, here is a vastly incomplete list of my own interests: making jewelry (which I never thought would enter into my writing but is starting to, in the book I'm mentally reconstructing now), Rumi (because his poems are so beautiful and help me step back onto my own spiritual path if I've gone astray for a time), standing stones and dowsing and other new age tidbits as you will see in my book Sun God Moon Witch, playing the transverse flute and recorder and learning the Indian flute and the Japanese (zen) shakuhachi, folklore, legends, mythology [as most readers will see were resources in my books [book:False Face], The Third Magic,Witchery Hill Come Like Shadows), a writerly interest in character growth over certain excellent television series such as NCIS and Bones, yoga (both physical and its philosophical monism - a spiritual path I find fascinating), social issues such as prejudice and the changing of country boundaries because of it as shown in my books False Faceand Come Like Shadows, interspecies communication particularly with whales as in my book Whalesinger, climate change as has already outpaced my imagination as shown in my book Time Ghost, sketching, gorgeously impossible golf courses even though I don't play golf, Stonehenge and other standing stones as well as the math and science of prehistoric peoples, online shopping, murder mystery novels, J.S.Bach's and Mozart's music though mostly I prefer medieval music and some modern songs such as "You" by Fisher (album The Lovely Years),"Japanese Music Box" by Itsuki No Komoriuta (album "Forest" played by George Winston), "The Lady of Shalott" by Loreena McKennitt (album The Vist), "Leonard Cohen Live in London" (double album, all of it), "Someone to Watch Over Me" by Willie Nelson (album Stardust), "Autumn" by George Winston (whole album), "Fragile" by Jorane (The You and the Now), and "Words Can't Go There" by John Kaizan Neptune (album of same name).

Like you I love movies, nature, some TV, and I play bridge and even some video games (Wii, PS2, Nintendo DS: favourites Kingdom Hearts, and P4). Books, of course. We'll find out more about each other in my blog, I'm sure.

Reviews

[C. (Don't blank click my reviews, comment please! · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Come Like Shadows” caught my eye but seemed geared for teenagers. I included it in this year’s Canadian reading theme and have to tell you: there is a lot more to this novel than mishaps at a play. It’s difficult to list why it’s very different than you can tell without reading it. Fiction always teaches me something about a place or a career but this is one of those stories that didn’t cease to educate me, very noticeably! Perhaps you know the feeling of coming away feeling glad you absorbed the contents. There are many layers: about William Shakespeare, ancient Scotland - which I didn’t know was called “Alba” - and even Québécois politics enter in. You see? This isn’t just an awesome adventure concerning witches but the mystical is there, too!

This came out in 1993, after ‘the Meech Lake accord’ and ‘free trade’ were debated and Québec sought separation from Canada. They lost, or were about to, at this time. The play’s director, a Québec Anglophone, drew parallels using French props. The protagonist is her friend’s daughter, a stage hand observing what a production is like. I admit belatedly learning what “Macbeth” is about and that he’s real! It’s interesting that Shakespeare altered history to avoid offending his king, a descendent of ‘Duncan’ who was the evil-doer; not the other way around. A modest rating is solely due to ‘have got’ contractions, which make me wince and stylistic incidentals that happened to be my kryptonite.

The fictitious portion was fantastic. The last day the actual Macbeth lived, he interrupted a spell and was stuck in a mirror! Welwyn Wilton Katz conceived tremendous detail, like ‘Kincardine’s’ dread when she sees she is being led to the Scottish town bearing her name, the site of the ancient stone circle....

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay so you know when you're visiting somewhere and you pick up a random book and JUST HAVE TO FINISH IT? Well, I was at my mom's, and I picked up this young adult Shakespeare-&-magic!!! romp I remembered liking in elementary school. And goddammit -- with apologies to my ten-year-old self -- here we are.

As with most young adult fantasy-lite books, the plot is the major point. This plot is some convoluted crazy about a spunky teenage girl with a summer job...and Macbeth and the witches getting trapped in a mirror for centuries, and popping up in Stratford for a "FUCK THE QUEBEC FRENCH!!" performance of Macbeth, which is subsequently cursed by the witches and leaves the book in VERY WEIRD, pro-separatist political territory.

Now, I'll get to the Shakespeare stuff in a minute -- but for anyone who doesn't live in Canada, let me repeat my reaction when I realized where this was going.

Ahem.

Just clearing my throat.

Okay here we go:

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?"


In what freaking universe is that a good idea? The director character, Jeneva, makes interesting comparisons between Macbeth at Dunsinane and the battle on the Plains of Abraham (between the English & the French for the conquest of Quebec territory) -- but is then villified for essentially the entire novel, not to mention our spunky protagonist Kinny's blind devotion to the 'injustices faced by the French Canadians.' This thing reads like propaganda. And let me tell you, as an Anglophone Quebecer who believes very strongly in equal rights: this was NOT an accurate portrayal of the Francophone/Anglophone situation in our province. Anglophones ARE second class citizens. No whitewashing of equal rights discourse changes that.

But fine, it was published in the mid-90s, right when the separatist debate was at a pretty high peak. What about the rest of the book, you ask?

Well, when Kinny's not sewing maple leaves for the production (honestly?? HONESTLY?? GUYS. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE THINK CANADIAN FICTION IS BORING.), she's being massively pretentious and annoying along with the rest of the one-note cast of characters. So no respite there. The plot, as I said, is so magic-oriented it makes little sense. All that's left is the not-so-subtle commentary on Macbeth itself.

Alright.
So I just finished teaching Macbeth for the first time. Always a favourite, I was besotted this time around -- chiefly with the complexity of morality, the fluid definitions of power, the layered characters, the heartstopping speeches, and above all, LADY FUCKING MACBETH. I cannot see someone with two brain cells reading this play and NOT being blown away by her strength, fragility, passion, hunger, and proto-feminism. Macbeth is a king among Shakespeare leads, but Lady M is a supernova.

She is mentioned
literally
twice.
And BOTH TIMES
Jeneva is telling the actress to add "more sex" to her performance because "that's the source of Lady M's power."

BITCH DID WE READ THE SAME PLAY??!!

I get that Jeneva's interpretation of the play is supposed to be generally incorrect, but to have an entire book about the witches and NEVER OTHERWISE INTERPRET LADY M?! Macbeth is made out to be this wondrous gentleman who was dealt a hard lot but oh let's NEVER OTHERWISE INTERPRET LADY M. Are you kidding. She is EVERYTHING. And even if you don't like her, you can't write a book like this, touching on themes of female power (however obliquely) and flat-out ignore her. QUEEN IS TOO GOOD FOR THAT SHIT.

I teach high school English and I genuinely love Shakespeare, so I endlessly try to articulate reasons that his work is still relevant. Macbeth strikes me, thematically, as one of the easier ones to explain -- and Lady Macbeth has a large part in that. This book negates much of the play's power (not just in omitting her character, though admittedly that rankled me most), and in doing so makes the overall story somewhat pointless.

But that said I literally couldn't put it down and I'm a nostalgic masochist so two stars. Whatever.

[Clickety · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't've checked this book out if I hadn't thought I might like it. I just didn't know I'd enjoy reading it as much as I did. The characters were incredibly well-formed, and the plot moves quickly without becoming confusing. I couldn't put it down.

The pacing does feel a bit rushed at the end, and the ending seemed abrupt. Other than that, it was amazing.

[Leanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a kid, but was reminiscing about this author (she's from my hometown!) and reading the synopsis I see that this book takes place where I live! haha :) Must re-read sometime.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother gave me a signed copy of this book when I was a young teen. I remember how magical it was! I would love to read this again!

[SBC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the sort of book I would normally choose to read, but recommended to me. The book is heavily Canadian focused, politics, etc (although I thought it very significant that although the book supports the French and their right to have their own segment of the country or even their own country, it totally effaces the indigenous people of Canada; the debate becomes about who was there first, the French or English, and thus who has the most right to the land - no where is ever mentioned the indigenous people and their proprietary right to the land, they simply do not exist in this mindset!)

The story begins in Macbeth's Alba (Scotland) and he is a good man who becomes trapped in a mirror used by the three witches (Maiden, Mother, and Hag, who appear to be evil, perhaps in a banal kind of way - they cause other people to commit evil acts and don't care about stealing a young girl's body; what their purpose is and was and how they are important to the world or the Goddess and her functioning is never explained).

The story centres around Kinny, a 16 year old Anglo Canadian with French Canadian friends and sympathies, who goes to a different part of the country to work in the theatre for her mother's old school friend, Jeneva. Jeneva is directing Macbeth, but a version that uses the play for Jeneva's anti-French hatreds (she hates them because they closed down most of the funding for English-speaking theatres in Quebec, where she and Kinny are from). Lucas is about 20 and he and Kinny become caught up in the fate of the mirror.

The story ends somewhat ambiguously, because while things are resolved for Lucas and Kinny (even with the potential that he will visit her in Quebec, perhaps romantically - an odd little interjection), the witches have been sent into the future again, and poor Macbeth is still trapped in the mirror with them.

[Derek Newman-Stille · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Review of Welwyn Wilton Katz’s Come Like Shadows (Coteau Books, 1993)
By Derek Newman-Stille

As someone who has done stage acting, Welwyn Wilton Katz’ Come Like Shadows spoke to my experience of the stage, and added a little bit of magic in addition to the already potent magic of the theatre itself. Set at the Stratford Festival during a production of Macbeth, Come Like Shadows evokes the play between the ‘real’ and the ‘artificial’, bringing home the point to the reader that ‘truth’, ‘history’, and ‘knowledge’ are all as constructed as the stage – just sets and trappings of performance.

In theatre, naming the Scottish Play, or the Thane is taboo. Macbeth is seen as a cursed play, and speaking the name “Macbeth” in a theatre outside of the production itself is believed to bring disaster on any production. When the Stratford Festival decides to stage ‘the Scottish Play’, disaster happens – a series of unfortunate events involving the death of actors, stage fires, and general tragedies both on and offstage. Actors and performance are brought into a historical assemblage, players in a curse that was created when the historical figure of Macbeth decided to interrupt a pagan ceremony by three ‘witches’ who sought to regain their youth by entering into a mirror. When Macbeth intentionally changes their spell for youth, replacing the spell’s words “Two into one. Find through this glass a future for thy past that the name of the Goddess be remembered” into “Two into one. Find through this glass a past for thy future that the name of Macbeth be remembered” and both he and the eldest of the witches, the Hag, are pulled into the mirror and projected into the future, stuck in the glass.

The Hag, now a manifestation of rage spends centuries torturing Macbeth in the mirror, locking the two into an eternal combat. When she discovers that a bard by the name of William Shakespeare is trying to honour the memory of the Thane with a play, she changes his words, making Macbeth into a villain so that rather than fame, Macbeth’s name becomes associated with infamy. She inscribes words of magic into the play to attract her sisters, the Maiden and Mother, with the hope that the other two witches might be able to free her from the mirror. From that moment onward, the play becomes a nexus of strange, magical events.

Kincardine (Kinny) O’Neill, named after a small Scottish town that her father once visited, wants to become an actress. When she finds out that she has an internship with the Stratford Festival, she jumps at the opportunity, particularly since her mother’s friend Jeneva is directing Macbeth this year… only to become horrified when Jeneva decides to use the text of Macbeth to launch her own attack on French Canadians (whose rights Kinny had been defending). Canadian identity, Kinny’s own coming of age, and the path of history intersect in the performance, evoking the power of performance for speaking about issues of identity nationally, personally, and historically.

Kinny meets Lucas, born French Canadian but having adopted a completely American identity for himself out of embarrassment at his French heritage and due to teasing from American children who see him as a humourous Other.

When shopping for props for the performance, Kinny and Lucas find a mirror at a local antique store that draws both of their attention. The mirror shows the two of them the past and Macbeth’s encounter with the witches. It offers Kinny power and magic, and offers Lucas a glimpse of the historical figure of Macbeth that he wishes to one day play. Both become obsessed with the mirror – Kinny out of fear of what it could offer her, and Lucas out of obsession with the ‘truth’ behind Macbeth. Both are horrified at Jeneva’s appropriation of the play for her own purposes and the distortions that she brings to the performance in order to further her own ends rather than discover some fundamental truths in the act of performing. For both youths, theatre should be an act of self-discovery, but theatre is also a place of appearances, of distortions.

The Maiden and Mother involve themselves in the play, manipulating the performance itself as well as the fates of those involved, making the world a stage for their own desires. Like the mirror itself, the play becomes a reflection not of truth but of their desires and the desires of those who gaze into it, drawing them into webs of control. Past and present, truth and falseness, reality and lies all become implicated and interwoven in the play and issues of identity are challenged and complicated. Whenever characters try to change the path of their destinies, they are brought further under the control of the three weavers of fate, losing their free will during every attempt they make to express it. Like Macbeth himself, characters are trapped into pre-ordained actions and roles, deprived of agency before Fate’s power. Like a pre-written performance, everyone is assigned to their roles, acting out their lives under the influence of a director.

Katz brings the essence of Shakespeare’s play into a modern Canadian environment and a coming of age story, exploring the way that identity becomes subsumed by choices and the perception that there is a lack of choice. Like the clashing of Scottish and English interests in the play, she writes about a time when Franco-Canadians and Anglo-Canadians battled about notions of identity and the place of French Canada within an overwhelming Anglo majority. Like Macbeth, Kinny and Lucas feel that they are trapped into hopeless fate, their identities subsumed by a fate that they see as larger than themselves. Like the Scottish Play, notions of sacrifice and suffering end up being for nothing, never allowing freedom from the restraints placed on the characters.

If you are interested in reading a longer version of my review, you can check it out on Speculating Canada at http://speculatingcanada.wordpress.co...

[Laina SpareTime]

Cross-posted from my blog where there's more information on where I got my copy and links and everything.

Well, I just realized the summary on the back of the book is wrong. It's straight up wrong. It's different than this one, for the record, and it mentions something that never happens in the book. So, you know. We're off to a good start here.

This book is a year younger than me. It's over twenty years old. It's definitely not the worst aged book I've read, but it is dated. It doesn't read like modern YA, for sure, and there's a lot of moments that are offensive. There's a fair amount of casually fatphobic comments, one frankly racist remark that I thought was really unnecessary even in the context it tried to achieve, and there's just general moments that are dated and don't work for me.

I do think this is a book full of interesting ideas. A book set in a theatre during a professional play being put on? Interesting. A YA book that talks about Canadian history and Quebec politics? Interesting. A book that uses Macbeth as both background and a character? Interesting! But I don't think they combined as well as they could have. It's almost like each of them you kind of checked off and was done with after a certain point.

Overall, I think I liked the idea of this book better than I liked the book. I like books set in Canada, and I thought having parts of it set in Scotland was really interesting, too, but it just didn't do it for me. I don't think I would read this again, and because of that, I think I'll be passing this one along. And because this is quite dated, I don't think I would put my recommendation on it. If you are a sucker for theatre books, or books about Macbeth, or any of these elements, you may enjoy this, but there are a few too many things that make me wince in this to recommend it personally.

I read a little about the author, and that she hasn't been able to write for several years, but if she ever did come out with something new, I would definitely be interested in it.

[Miki · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

This was a fun, nostalgic read for me. I first read this in grade 10...So that would have been autumn/winter 1997 or winter/spring/summer 1998, LOL!

I didn't remember the story very well, but after reading it, it makes sense why our teacher selected it as a companion piece to Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (the required Shakespeare reading for that year at my high school). The author, from my hometown, did a great job of creating a setting that is uniquely southwestern Ontario. Thinking about Stratford's theatre and surroundings were so nice to think of...Especially in summer and warmer weather.

I think that this story would be fantastic for people who enjoyed "Macbeth" and/or are interested in reading about a theatrical productions. There is also heavy emphasis on the Anglo-Francophone divide in Canada. I enjoyed the protagonist's dedication to her family and friends in Quebec and her determination to stand up to negative comments about Québécois. Canada wouldn't be Canada without Québec in my humble opinion, but I'm biased because my family is French-Métis. I think that the book pays tribute to Canada's French heritage is something that was lacking in a lot of the Canadian literature I read when I was younger. So nice to see it in this story!!!

[Bought used on Amazon]

[Mareena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixteen-year-old Kincardine O'Neil is absolutely ecstatic when she manages to get a summer job with the prestigious Stratford Theatre of Canada. Although she has a sneaking suspicion that she may not have gotten the job based on her own merits, but because her mother went to high school with Jeneva Strachan - the director of Stratford Theatre's annual Drama Festival. Whatever the truth of the matter, Kinny is determined to do the best that she possibly can in her new position.

However, when Kinny first arrives in Stratford, nothing is as it seems. In fact, things start to go wrong almost immediately. Her position as Jeneva Strachan's assistant seems a little tenuous; her 'boss' is acting very strangely: chilly and standoffish one minute; warm and attentive the next. Kinny is fairly certain that Jeneva just doesn't know what to do with the teenager; or at the very least she definitely doesn't want Kinny around.

The director's attitude towards Kinny soon becomes quite obvious, and begins to spread among the actors. The majority of the company - with one or two exceptions - appears hostile and slightly condescending. While Kinny initially tries to ignore their attitudes - putting their rudeness and pettiness down to their beliefs that she is "only a kid" - she doesn't know how to change the situation.

Instead, she throws herself into the preparations for Stratford Theatre's annual Drama Festival: a complete reimagining of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Kinny knows that actors are intensely superstitious; after all, superstition is an integral part of theatrical culture - she just doesn't believe that some minor wardrobe and prop malfunctions, or even the occasional bad review - will ultimately doom the play. However when one woman dies in a freak accident, Kinny is horrified. Could there possibly be any truth to the rumors; could it be that the play, Macbeth, is actually cursed?

When yet another prop malfunction leaves the production without an appropriate mirror to use, the harried prop designer asks Kinny to try and locate a new one. After instituting an exhaustive search of all the secondhand shops around Stratford, Kinny eventually discovers a plain wooden hand mirror in an out-of-the-way junk shop. According to the shopkeeper, the mirror was originally part of a shipment of antique theatre props, so should be exactly what she needs.

Although there are some slight imperfections with the mirror - most notably an unusual burn mark in its handle - Kinny feels strangely compelled to buy it. Soon, as she begins to spend more time around the mirror, Kinny begins to notice changes happening to herself and several other members of the Stratford Theatre Company. She slowly becomes convinced that the mirror has some sort of mysterious power; a mesmerizing power that seems to come from somewhere deep in the past.

The mirror begins to exert that power over select members of the company - actors have visions of an ancient stone circle and a distressed but regal looking figure. Kinny herself begins to have visions of three peculiar women - women who seem to wield an extraordinary influence over the past and the present. Determined to find out what's happening, Kinny begins to investigate the history of Scotland and tries to discover something more about the true Macbeth.

Yet the closer that Kinny comes to the historic figure of Macbeth, the more she witnesses the power of these three mysterious women. She is left wondering just who these women are, and what sort of power they have over this particular production of Macbeth. And just what do they want from her?

Actually, I had already read another book by Ms. Katz several years before this one. I had also studied Macbeth in high school and was intrigued to discover how the author would use the play in the plot. I read this book for the first time back in 1995 and thoroughly enjoyed reading it back then. While I found the plot to be just as interesting as when I read the book the first time, I would have to give it a B+!