Giving up is sort of but sometimes not really hard to do: a kind of review of Macbeth by Jo Nesbo as read by the awesome Euan Morton

I gave up on Jo Nesbo's Macbeth, a retelling of the Shakespeare tragedy set in the 70s.  I just couldn't keep going, knowing where everything was leading.  This was not like the humorous and generally completely inappropriate Christopher Moore book based on a Shakespeare tragedy (Fool based on King Lear) that made it into a comedy without actually changing anything that happened in the actual play, and I didn't have any twists and turns and different endings to look forward to as in Moore's other book kind-of-based on Shakespeare plays (Serpent of Venice). 

Basically the only thing to look forward to was increasing madness, paranoia, violence, regret, and the always amazing vocal performance of Euan Morton.  I guess I cannot just listen to anything he reads, which is unfortunate because he is a very fine audiobook reader. 

Maybe at another time, as a summer read while I basked in the sun for instance, I could have handled the level of tragedy inherent in a serious retelling of the story.  I admired some of the cleverness of setting and situation.  Some of the characters were intriguing, and I even liked some of them until they started self -and -other destructing.  I think the problem is similar to the problem I have always had when a Shakespeare play is presented in another setting to make it edgy or appealing to a different aesthetic: the illusion falls apart when the Elizabethan English and the unchangeable plot of the play start, and people's motivations just don't make sense anymore in a modern context.

Maybe if the author started off at the same place with the same basic characters and then let them do their own thing completely until we got to a totally different ending?  Or maybe even the same ending but a different way of getting there that made me hate characters I previously liked slightly less?  I didn't even make it very far past Act 1.

I don't know.  This autumn has felt very sudden and very gray, and I might just not be able to handle this added fictional sadness on top of the real life sadness and tragedy in the lives of those around me in my very real life.  It's probably not Nesbo; it's probably me.  It definitely isn't Morton.  I am already waiting (in 32nd place or so) for his most recent audiobook (sequel to one I listened to on a whim after my Moore excursion).  I can't wait to hear him bring more characters to life, so long as they are not destined to all kill each other and die horribly, crushed in the gears of a plot outside their control.