R. A. Spratt is a brilliant, imaginative author with a string of impressive novels already to her name, and Hamlet Is Not OK is no exception.
Spratt has come up with a tale about a 16-year-old girl who feels like she never fits in at school or in the world and that she’s always a disappointment to her parents, both teachers, who run the local book shop in a sleepy little country town.
Selby doesn’t excel at school like her brother and isn’t that popular either.
So she spends her days slinking around the fringes, waiting for the school bell to ring so she can escape her prison.
Selby’s biggest secret is blown when her parents are called to the school for parent teacher interviews and they discover she has dodged doing any homework for six months and nobody noticed.
So far this sounds like the life of a typical teenager struggling with growing up — right?
It’s what Spratt does with this scenario that is remarkable and wonderful.
Selby is immediately grounded and her parents hire a tutor — her brother’s nerdy mate, Dan, to get her back on the straight and narrow.
One of her immediate tasks is to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and pass a test on it to prove she’s mended her ways.
And this is where the book becomes magical.
At first Dan and Selby clash and she fights him all the way when he makes her read the text out loud, which is something she hates to do.
But when Dan tells her that her voice is mesmerising and brings the story alive, things change dramatically.
Suddenly they are thrown back literally into Shakespeare’s time. They find themselves at Elsinore castle and are confronted with Hamlet in person as he sets out to avenge his father’s murder.
The plot is beguiling, as Selby and Dan talk Hamlet out of doing anything stupid and Hamlet spurns Ophelia for Selby and Ophelia falls for Dan on the rebound.
The story is hilarious and charming and entertaining, especially when Selby and Dan bring Hamlet and Ophelia through the time warp to the book shop to save them from themselves and then realise that won’t work because it will change the plot line of one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and many classics that it inspired.
Don’t be put off by the lines of Shakespeare’s dialogue that are woven into the story.
As the author herself explains in the introduction, if you are a Shakespeare fan you’ll love it — if not, just let the quotations wash over you and you’ll soon get the message.
This book is just over 200 pages long and I read it in one sitting, thoroughly entertained and loving it.
• Hamlet Is Not OK, by R.A. Spratt
Published by Penguin Books
Available at Goulburn Valley Regional Libraries