book cover of Locus Amoenus
 

Locus Amoenus

(2015)
A novel by

 
 
In this beautifully nuanced dark comedy, a 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, have retreated from Brooklyn to the idyllic rural countryside upstate, where for nearly eight years they have run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately, their outrageously obese neighbors, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, reject their elitist ways (recycling, eating healthy, reading).

Hamlet, who is now 18, is beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America, where health, happiness, and freedom are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Paxil, endless war, standard curriculum, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the very day of the eighth anniversary of his father's death, his mother marries a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius.

Things get even more depressing for Hamlet when he learns from Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, that Claudius is a fraud. The deceptions, spying, and corruption will ultimately lead, as in Shakespeare's play, to tragedy.


Genre: Literary Fiction

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