Miranda in Milan

Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, navigates a haunted-house landscape of witchcraft, secrets, and abuse in Duckett’s gothic debut, a Tempest sequel that falls short of its progressive aims. Miranda is shunned for a ghostly resemblance to her mother, Beatrice, and her marriage to Ferdinand is delayed. She lurks, isolated, in Milan’s castle until she falls in love with Dorothea, a Marrakech-born servant and witch. Together, they unravel the mystery of Prospero’s exile and face his web of violent lies. Despite poetic prose, the narrative bogs down under arbitrary trauma-logic: circumstances and characterization—both Shakespeare’s and Duckett’s—warp to emphasize Miranda’s helplessness and desperation, yet a bit of minimal effort undoes the entire purportedly terrifying scheme. Dorothea is a perpetually patient and brown-skinned caretaker-lover for hapless white Miranda, and their off-puttingly unequal romance undermines the book’s postcolonialist talk; Miranda’s eventual moral growth can’t erase the exploitation of bedding the maid. Half rescue fantasy and half violent Gothic, this disturbing story forgets there’s more to love than being deemed not a monster. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary. (Apr.)