Tudormania Lives -- Part Deux

Picking up -- briefly -- on an earlier post about the latest influx of Tudor-focused historical novels: it's not over yet!

The latest news is that historian and novelist Alison Weir has signed a contract to produce a series of six novels featuring, yes, you guessed it, each of the six wives of Henry VIII, for British publisher Headline, the first of which will see the light of day in 2016.

The news sparked quite a kerfuffle over on the Historical Novel Society's Facebook page, of which I'm a member. Reading between the lines, there are a handful of aspiring novelists out there interested in writing about other eras who seem to feel that the combination of the proven market clout of the Tudors and Alison Weir's ability to bridge the gap between popular history and popular fiction better than most writers, may do what lesser-known luminary of the historical crime writing world Lynn Shepherd alleged that JK Rowling was doing with her shift to adult fiction: using her celebrity to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere and making it tougher for other writers to breathe.

Not that Weir is JK Rowling; she's just one of dozens of writers, ranging from those with household names (the ubiquitous Philippa Gregory) who have long made the Tudors her bread and butter, and to whom readers have gravitated as a result. (She's also earned a reputation for being far more generous than many of her peers with many of those aspiring writers, so kudos to her.)

That said: is there anything left to say about these six women?? To be blunt, they wore the crown matrimonial and weren't reigning queens. Arguably, Catherine of Aragon was significant for her heritage and the longevity of the marriage, but how many times is it entertaining to read a novel about the breakdown of the same marriage? Similarly, how many times is it fascinating to read about Anne Boleyn, when you know just how very, very badly the story ends for her? With biographies aplenty out there, and novels based on the latest scholarly research, what remains to be said? Catherine Howard met her end on the block as a teenager after a rather furtive little affair; it's tragic, but again, not the stuff of which countless novels of tremendous interest are made. Do we read the same story over and over again, or go in search of new fare?

I think the challenge for Weir will be to prove that she can approach these stories with a truly new angle. The challenge for publishers? That's a tougher one altogether. I want someone to prove to me that they are willing to take a risk and publish some novels set in less-usual eras and places, and by authors who aren't (yet) household names. For me, that means no Tudors, no Wars of the Roses, and very little from ancient Rome, World War I or World War II. In the coming weeks, I'll try to draw attention to a couple of these books -- and challenge readers to give them a chance, too.

Tudormania is alive and well in a bookstore near you!

I confess, I have a crush on Matthew Shardlake. Yes, I know he's a fictional character, and a hunchback, and a lawyer. But, whatever. As created by C.J. Sansom, he's an incredibly powerful and convincing character. He's human: wary, fearful, lonely. After all, it's the summer of 1546 in the opening pages of this, the latest episode of the series of mysteries featuring Shardlake, and Lincoln's Inn has just dispatched him to witness the appalling death by burning at the stake of Anne Askew. The king, Henry VIII, has determined that she and others are heretics and must die for their beliefs. Of course, Henry's views of what makes someone a heretic are somewhat erratic -- devout monks have died as traitors for denying his claim to be head of the English church, while Anabaptists die for denying the rites of baptism and mass. It's enough to make anyone's head spin, and Shardlake is determined to keep his firmly attached to his (hunched) shoulders, thank you very much.

But Shardlake is also a man of principles, and a few very strong loyalties -- one to his closest friend and ally, Jack Barak, who now works alongside him in his legal practice, and another to Catherine Parr, the king's sixth wife. Queen Catherine, a reformer, has left Shardlake alone for a year since last turning to him to help her with legal matters, aware that their association led both of them into peril. But now she has no choice. Someone has stolen the text of a manuscript of religious devotions that she herself had written -- that no one else knew existed, but that can be made to look as if she, too, is a heretic. In the wrong hands, it could condemn her to a fate like that suffered by some of her predecessors. And as his life approaches its end, Henry's ill health makes his temper more dangerously volatile than ever before. The power struggle for who will control the young heir, Prince Edward, is already beginning, and many would like to see Catherine sidelined. Will Matthew help?

And so begins Shardlake's latest adventure, and it's a doozy. Frankly, I think it's one of the best books in this series so far, and removes any doubts raised by the not-quite-up-to-snuff Heartstone, its immediate predecessor. Shardlake encounters printers and Anabaptists, as well as devout Catholics eager to bring down anyone they see as being affiliated with the reformers. Some of his own clients may be his worst enemies; old adversaries may become temporary allies. He leads his friends into immense peril -- and the novel ends on a note that is going to make it very, very, very hard for me to wait for the next installment of the series. Sansom is simply going to have to write more rapidly. Or I'm going to have to find a time travel machine and go back and find out what happened next.

This book won't be out in the United States until February, so if you're reading this here and gnashing your teeth in fury and irritation, you have a couple of options. Firstly, be aware that this is the sixth book in an excellent series of historical mysteries that begins with Dissolution; you've got lots of time to go back and read your way through 'em before Lamentation arrives. Or, if you've already encountered Master Shardlake, well, either Amazon.co.uk or BookDepository.com would be happy to ship a copy of this to you toute de suite, the former for a not-too-small fee. The latter has just resumed shipping UK titles to the US and generally does so without the shipping, but I've found them slightly less reliable.

Then, since Tudor mania is once again running rampant in historical fiction publishing circles, you'll find some alternatives on the bookstore shelves to consider while you're waiting for your package to show up. Two I can recommend heartily; two, I can only suggest that you steer clear of.




C.W. Gortner may have made his name writing biographical historical novels focusing on medieval ladies such as Isabella of Castile and her daughter, Juana la Loca (his breakthrough novel, The Last Queen) but the first novel of his that I read was actually originally a self-published book, The Tudor Secret, that became a trilogy of historical mysteries, of which The Tudor Vendetta is the final volume. They feature the intrepid Brendan Prescott, an ally of the princess who has, at last, ascended to the throne as Queen Elizabeth. Brendan, raised in the household of the Dudleys, is now firmly in the camp of William Cecil and the "intelligencers" of Walsingham, etc., so the enmity with which he views Dudley make sense, even if it is exaggerated for dramatic effect here. And as in Sansom's book, it is his loyalty to a queen that counts: Elizabeth, even without knowing the true story of his own parentage, entrusts him with a secret mission. Without telling either Dudley or Cecil, she says, he  must find her beloved lady in waiting, Blanche Parry, who has vanished after visiting Catholic kinsmen. But the secret turns out to be greater than Brendan could ever have imagined, and it will seal the two young people together more tightly than ever before -- if, that is, the monarch and her subject can both survive the immediate perils. One warning here: you need to have an above-average tolerance for a rewriting of historical characters and what they may or may not have done in their lives. I confess that this did end up stretching my credulity to breaking point, but ultimately, it was the adventure that mattered.



Elizabeth Fremantle is clearly a historical novelist to watch. After penning an impressive debut novel about Katherine Parr, she has gone on to write something even stronger here, focusing on the younger sisters of Lady Jane Grey. Left in a perilous position after their sister's execution, Katherine -- the frivolous beauty -- and Mary -- the intelligent and quick-witted hunchback -- must navigate and survive two very different courts, that of Catholic Mary, who had signed their sister's death warrant, and that of Elizabeth. Both see the sisters as rivals, but ironically it under Elizabeth that they may end up faring worse. What I relished most about this was that part of the tale is told through the eyes of a relative outsider, the painter Lavinia Teerlinc, who knows and cares for both young women and tries to help both navigate the great power politics of their day. But Katherine has too little judgment -- first allowing herself to be wooed by the Spanish faction at court in Elizabeth's early days as Queen and later to marry without the Queen's permission. For her part, Mary, craving love and affection, is in search of a measure of freedom and independence. It's beautifully written, impeccably researched and absolutely fascinating -- something that I hadn't expected, given that the stories of both young women were already reasonably well known to me. Anyone to whom they are new likely will find it even more compelling. Run and get it now!



And now for Elizabeth Tudor herself... For some reason, with very few exceptions (Susan Kay's Legacy being one), books about Elizabeth on the throne seem to be much less compelling than those about her struggle to reach it. Once she's there, the drama seems to shift elsewhere -- in particular, to the struggles by Cecil and Walsingham to keep her there and to fight the espionage wars. (And there are some great non-fiction books on this topic, like The Watchers, by Stephen Alford.) In a nutshell, that's the problem with this novel by Alison Weir. Her previous novel, The Lady Elizabeth, was suspenseful, even though the reader knows that she didn't end up losing her head like her mother before her but survived to become the greatest of the Tudor monarchs. This volume, as Elizabeth plays the marriage game with her foreign suitors and alternately indulges in some hot and heavy romantic interludes with Robert Dudley, while delivering verbatim set piece speeches about not making windows into her subjects souls, etc., simply isn't all that interesting. It plods along, from one year and one episode in Elizabeth's life, to the next. One suitor fades from the scene to be replaced by the next. Elizabeth ages; her vanity grows, as does the novel's tedium. You'd be better off reading a well-written biography, quite frankly. This is really a biography that takes liberties with some of the facts and throws in some dialog.

For the record, I'm not a Philippa Gregory hater. I do think that she loves to overstate her qualifications, referring to her doctorate on every possible occasion (when it's in English literature, rather than history), and I think her writing talent, as opposed to her ability to spin a yarn, is negligible. Her penchant for saying the same thing three times in essentially the same way within five sentences is inexplicable and bizarre. What I have enjoyed about some of her novels is her ability to take a different perspective on issues. For instance, her novel about Mary Queen of Scots is a great example of the late Tudor clash of the old aristocracy -- Mary Stuart, the captive queen, and her jailor, the earl of Shrewsbury -- and the upstart new merchant class, as represented by Bess of Hardwick the brisk business-minded countess of Shrewsbury. We see the beginnings of that conflict in this novel, as Henry VII and Henry VIII deliberately -- in Gregory's telling -- push away the nobles upon whom they traditionally would have relied for advice, and instead turn to parvenus to help them rule. The narrator here is Henry VIII's cousin, Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, born Margaret Plantagenet, who would become his oldest victim and the oldest woman ever executed when a headsman famously had to chase her around the block to behead her. But for a period of decades, she was at the center of the Tudor court, governess to the young princess, Mary, and in high favor. This is the tale of overweening ambition and pride and an inability to recognize changing realities. Normally, having an unlikable narrator doesn't spoil a book for me, but this was an exception: Margaret was an irritatingly blind and silly woman whom I wanted to shake, rather than a subtle and complex character and the writer didn't compensate for any of this. The themes, as I noted, were interesting to ponder, but once developed, I could ponder them on my own without having to read Gregory's novel. I think there's a ratio here: for every interesting novel Gregory writes, there are four mediocre to unreadable ones. This wasn't nearly as bad as The White Queen or The Kingmaker's Daughter, but you can do a lot better.

Still suffering from Tudormania? Keep an eye open for a golden oldie, Margaret George's The Autobiography of Henry VIII (her debut novel and still her best); the series of historical mysteries by Rory Clements featuring John Shakespeare (brother of the more famous you-know-who); and Fiona Buckley's earlier historical mysteries set in Elizabethan England, featuring Ursula Blanchard, starting with To Shield the Queen. They are being re-released and made available on Kindle now.

Full disclosure: I received copies of "The Tudor Vendetta" and "Sisters of Treason" from their publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a review containing my honest opinions.

The Art of the Sequel: "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel

Following a fabulous novel like Wolf Hall is a tough order -- but I found Hilary Mantel managed to deliver just as a sequel that is just as compelling as the first in a proposed trilogy of novels devoted to Thomas Cromwell. Now I'm going to have a very tough time waiting for the third...

The historical Cromwell comes away from most books about him (even the one biography I've been able to lay hands on, by Robert Hutchinson) as a rather nasty piece of work -- the ultimate henchman, the kind of guy that Henry VIII had to have on his team to take on the dirty jobs that the king couldn't be seen to be undertaking, such as the dissolution of the monasteries. Mantel, in her afterword to Bring Up the Bodies, describes Thomas Cromwell as "sleek, plump and densely inaccessible" -- and yet she manages to take us, her readers, inside his mind to understand what makes him tick -- at least, just enough to make him and his world comprehensible.

I've been reading novels set in the Tudor era since I picked up Murder Most Royal by Jean Plaidy more than 40 years ago (the focus of that being on Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard). After the deluge of novels set around Anne Boleyn's rise and fall -- many of them pedestrian or thinly-disguised romances in fancy medieval garb -- I had given up on any hope of finding a really good novel in the midst of all the pages written about Henry and his wives. But here it is, at last -- indeed, I now have two of these rare gems. Mantel has crafted a novel that is not only about Henry and Anne, but about their era; about the unease that prevails in a kingdom with no legitimate male heir to a dynasty only two generations old and whose reigning monarch has turned his realm upside town by rejecting the pope's rule. She writes about the transformation of Tudor England, as men of ability, knowledge and focus, ranging from Cardinal Wolsey (whose fall from grace is chronicled in the first volume) to Cromwell and his apprentices (some of whom will outlive Henry) displace the nobility as the king's top advisors, to the disgruntlement of the dukes and earls and their scions. At the same time, Mantel never allows the substance to detract from the fact that she is telling the story of one man; of Cromwell, who rises to power because his elders and betters recognize the unique combination of ability and tenacity.


When Bring Up the Bodies opens, Cromwell is already well on the way to becoming one of the men who will prove most instrumental in transforming Henry VIII and his reign; a man who has dedicated his life to the study of the king and how to fulfill the latter's wishes and desires. After surviving the Cardinal's fall, he has risen in the king's service but still must battle with the old guard, the nobles and gentlemen -- "flattering them, cajoling them, seeking always an easy way of working, a compromise" But Cromwell is now indispensable to Henry. He also is one of the first to realize, within the first 50 pages of the book, that the king's despair at his lack of an heir nearly three years after his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and Cromwell's own frustration with these nobles, can be neatly resolved at the same time. "I have probably, he thinks, gone as far as I can to accommodate them. Now they must accommodate me, or be removed."

Wolf Hall was a lengthy novel, covering the best part of a decade in its pages. In contrast, the sequel is a tighter and more compressed narrative, focusing on the nine months or so leading up to the fall and execution of Anne Boleyn. When it opens, there is speculation that Anne may provide the kingdom with an heir. When it ends -- well, if you know English history, you know how it ends (and you'll still find the tension and suspense Mantel creates to be compelling), and if you don't, well, this is the book you want to learn it from. Once again Mantel recounts the events through the eyes of the consummate politician, Cromwell, who has learned well from Machiavelli and who yet still earns the understanding of readers, if not always our sympathy. Cromwell's motivations and goals may be laudable -- he seeks to run the kingdom well, to find a way to school and support male orphans who are abandoned (and who thus will support the female orphans), to mentor educated young men -- although sometimes what it takes to do that makes us squirm with unease. Even when those ends justify the means of getting rid of a queen who has not done her duty. "If she will not go, she must be pushed, and I must push her, who else?" To that end, justice becomes utilitarian: it is not who is guilty, so much as what they may be guilty of, and what guilt is of use to Cromwell, acting on the king's behalf.

One of the criticisms of Mantel's first book in this trilogy was her frequent use of "he" in place of Cromwell, which some readers found awkward. In this case, she has taken pains in some points to address that, replacing a simple "he" with "he, Cromwell" and although there were a few points in the early pages where I was occasionally unclear as to who was thinking or speaking, I quickly found this retreated to the background. Indeed, I began to get a glimpse of what Mantel may be trying to accomplish with this. If Cromwell is as "densely inaccessible" as she suggests, then a first person narrative would be too intimate; would give the reader too much insight too early into his actions and motivations. Mantel's style strikes the perfect compromise. Cromwell is the narrator; we are clearly seeing the Tudor court and England through his eyes, and we don't see the thoughts or views of other characters, except through the latters' actions; we are clearly following Cromwell throughout. And yet Cromwell is always "he"; an opaque and guarded individual. Even while we get a glimpse inside his thoughts and actions as if he were addressing a diary, we can never pretend we understand him -- and it becomes all too clear why, as some of his household remind him, his mere presence can terrify people. So his final confrontations with those who stand in the way of the king and his wishes are all the more revelatory. I hadn't thought there was much more to say about the downfall of Anne Boleyn, or much to say about Cromwell: I was very wrong on both counts.

I can't wait to see how Hilary Mantel deals with what comes next, in the volume that will see Cromwell reach the peak of his power but must also chronicle his own fall.  As Wolf Hall  ended with an execution, and with a new beginning, so does this novel. Now Cromwell must once again find a way to deal not only with his monarch (as he refines his imagined "Book of Henry", a guide on how to deal with the king and his moods and whims) but with an enigmatic new queen and her family. After all, as he muses, "Henry's women come trailing families, he does not find his brides in the forest hiding under a leaf."

Read it already? Well, seek out The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George, the author's debut and, in my opinion, by far her best book. Or, if you're looking for something about the next generation of Tudors and other monarchs with marital woes, try Reay Tannahill's Fatal Majesty, about Mary Queen of Scots. OK, she only had half as many husbands as Henry VIII did wives, but in Tannahill's hands, she and her entourage make for good reading.

As Promised, Some Great Historical Novels

Well, after venting my spleen at the poor excuse for a historical novel penned by Philippa Gregory in the form of The Lady of the Rivers, I promised you some better options. Some you might be familiar with; others may well be unknown to you and need to be hunted down. But in each and every case, these are books that I continue to re-read with great pleasure, sometimes over the course of decades.

• Katherine by Anya Seton: I was about to write that this is the grandaddy of historical novels, when I caught myself. In fact, Katherine Swynford, first mistress and later wife to John of Gaunt, is the ancestress of today's English monarchs, and Anya Seton does a fab job of fictionalizing her story, from a forced marriage to a boorish knight to her liaison with the man who became de facto ruler of England after the death of his father and older brother. Dense, detailed; a compelling read.
• A Rose for Virtue by Norah Lofts: Another forced marriage at the heart of this novel, that of Napoleon's stepdaughter, Hortense, to his brother, Louis. It's the story of Hortense's life from the Terror of the French Revolution, up to the end of the Napoleonic era. Publishers are reprinting some of Lofts's novels, so keep an eye open for this one.
• Brothers of Gwynned by Edith Pargeter: aka Ellis Peters -- you may have read her Brother Cadfael novels, or Sharon Penman's Welsh trilogy -- this covers the same territory, but from a single point of view. I know it's heresy, but I think I prefer this version to Penman's, if only because of the writing. Also recommended: A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury, which tells the tale of Hotspur and the young Henry V.
• The World, the Flesh and the Devil by Reay Tannahill: A favorite since the day it was published, 20 plus years ago. Set against the tumult of early 15th century Scotland, the story of a young woman who must carve out a place for herself amidst treachery and heartbreak. Highly recommended. Also suggested: Fatal Majesty, a novel based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the best fictionalized version of her story I've yet read.
• The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George: Like some of these novels, this one is a real chunkster -- could be used as a doorstop if needed. Will Somers, the king's fool, finds and annotates the king's diary before sending it to his illegitimate daughter. Very readable; by far the best of this author's books.
• Last Love by Thomas Costain: I literally read the covers off this one. Costain wrote many of his bestsellers back in the 50s, or even earlier. (The Black Rose was made into a Hollywood studio movie.) This tells the very fictional story of a young Englishwoman on St. Helena who gets to know Napoleon during his final exile. Also recommended: Below the Salt, a tale of time travel and medieval skulduggery involving the niece of the evil King John.
• The Master of Bruges by Terence Morgan: A newer but little-known book, that focuses on artistic genius Hans Memling, his works and his times. Morgan places his main character in London at the time of the Princes in the Tower -- and a sequel is promised for early 2012, which I'll be eager to buy. A favorite book of mine in 2010.
• A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman: For those fed up with the endless processions of Tudor queens, this first novel in a trilogy focuses on the adventures of Makepeace Hedley, whose life is turned upside down when she fishes an English nobleman out of Boston Harbor, in the years leading up to the French Revolution. My favorite is this, and the third in the series, which focuses on her daughter's adventures in revolutionary Paris (The Sparks Fly Upwards). Ignore the cutesy covers; these are tough, feisty heroines.
• The King's Daughter by Christie Dickason: It's hard to find great historical fiction set in Stuart England, but here's one that revolves around Elizabeth, daughter of James I, who fights her father's paranoia and suspicion of even his elder children. A sequel of sorts is due soon.
• Nefertiti by Michelle Moran: If you're tired of all this Western European stuff, try this novel and its sequel, The Heretic Queen. Both are thumping good reads, set in ancient Egypt. I'm less enamored of Cleopatra's Daughter, although her novel about Madame Tussaud is also good.
• In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella Haasse: a fabulous novel; one of only a handful by this Dutch writer to be translated into English. The story of Charles d'Orleans, captured in battle and imprisoned in England for many years.
• The Flight of the Heron by D.K. Broster: The first in a trilogy revolving around the Jacobite cause. 
• Ross Poldark by Winston Graham: The first of a long series of books that follow the Poldark family through wars and other kinds of strife, from the 1780s up until 1815. Ross returns from America to find the woman he loved married to his cousin; he struggles to get tin mines open and navigate the social and political upheavals of the era.
• The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan: First of two good books about the powerful woman who becomes wife to Moghul emperor Jahangir. Fascinating look at Moghul India. Shadow Princess, the third volume, is less compelling.

The best novels set in Renaissance Italy and in France that I've read are all written in French or translated into French from Italian... I'm racking my brain to think of novels set in Russia, China, Japan and even the United States to go on this list, but so far am coming up dry. I've read Kathleen Kent's novels, but they leave me cold; I've already raved about March by Geraldine Brooks. So I'll just have to keep my eyes open and update this list when I can!

I also noticed the shortage of novels by male writers or focusing on male characters. I'm not a big fan of the Bernard Cornwell style of novel, but I've found some very good historical mysteries that would fall into this category, so perhaps I'll draw up another list with some of those authors, like Rory Clements, James Forrester and Adrian Goldsworthy. So stay tuned...

Books with Buzz: "Lady of the Rivers" by Philippa Gregory

At some point in the next week or two, you'll walk into your bookstore and find massive displays clustered around the entrance and in the fiction section, jammed with glossy copies of The Lady of the Rivers, the third and final part of a trilogy of novels written by Philippa Gregory and based on the lives of key female players in the 15th century English civil war today known as the War of the Roses and then often referred to as The Cousins' War. I urge you: just walk on by, resist temptation, and save your money.

Unlike some other historical fiction afficionados, I am not a member of the Philippa Gregory anti-fan club. I enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl (though the film version took horrible liberties with both history and the text) because it gave the reader a different view of the court of Henry VIII and womens' lives at the time, through the eyes of someone who became a bit player, Anne Boleyn's sister. It didn't matter to me that Gregory may or may not have muddled up the birth order of the Boleyn siblings or their ages: it was hardly relevant to the story she was telling, and we simply don't have access to the facts. Most of the elements of the book that purists quibble over, to my mind fall into the grey areas of history -- the things that we can never know, and that novelists are free to interpret as they will, within the bounds of plausibility. A case in point: we don't know the fate of the Princes in the Tower. That gives novelists carte blanche to propose their own theories, within the bounds of probability and what readers find convincing.

Until this trilogy, my view of Gregory was that some of her books were more convincing or better written than others, and that on balance her influence was good, as she was reviving interest in a genre I've enjoyed since I was a child. Then came The White Queen. The first issue I had was all the hype; let's face it, Gregory is not Hilary Mantel. Which is fine, but as a reader, I don't want publicists trying to persuade me she is a literary novelist or a historian. That brings me to my second gripe, Gregory's growing interest in being accepted as a historian who happens to write novels, rather than a novelist.  (In her publicity materials, she is now referred to as Dr. Gregory and a historian, although her doctorate is in English literature, a fact not mentioned.)  That would matter less to me, too, if Gregory weren't in love with her own deathless prose. But it took me three tries to get through The White Queen  and The Lady of The Rivers is downright painful to read and even tedious. Plodding my way through the electronic galleys, I kept hoping for improvement, but found none. What sprang into my mind instead was a quip I read some years ago -- a performance review for a military officer: "His men (her readers) would follow him (her) anywhere, if only out of morbid curiosity."

So, what's the problem with The Lady of the Rivers, which is based on the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, who became aunt-by-marriage to a young Henry VI only to change allegiances when her daughter captured the eye and the heart of the young Edward IV decades later? It's not Gregory's view of history. I admit that having Jacquetta meet Joan of Arc, have extensive conversations with her, etc. in the early pages of the book, sent my eyebrows up into my hairline, but it was historically possible, if not plausible, and Gregory had to find a way to spice up a book that, let's face it, is about a woman who was better known for who she married, who she served (Margaret of Anjou) and what her many, many children by her second husband got up to. The only really interesting things about Jacquetta were the fact that she broke with tradition and married her late husband's squire for love -- unthinkable, when she was royal by marriage -- and later that she was accused of witchcraft, which Gregory works to death in this novel. (Indeed, Gregory is so enamored of the idea of "wise women" that she ignores evidence that doesn't support her theories.)

My apologies for the length of this screed, although in my own defense, it's proportional to the amount of marketing hype that will surround the novel when it's published... Still, I don't want to write an essay-length critique of Gregory's approach to historical fiction, so I'll quickly summarize all the reasons not to waste $15 plus on this book.

1. The plausibility issue. When Jacquetta is married off at 17 to the English duke of Bedford, the ruler of much of France (the territory his late brother, Henry V, conquered after Agincourt), she is oddly uninformed about the facts of life.  Even more oddly, John of Bedford (who was childless and presumably wanted a son) decides to leave her a virgin so that she can help him in his quest to discover the philosopher's stone... *roll eyes*
2. Heavy handed imagery. Jacquetta's ancestress is descended from Melusine, a kind of water witch, and Gregory reminds you directly or indirectly of this every third page or so. (Gregory even attributes Woodville's title, Earl Rivers, to this link...) I felt as if I was drowning in watery images, some of which were there simply because the author seemed intent on pummeling the reader with it. For instance, “I fall asleep in his arms like a mermaid diving into dark water”.
3. The use of the present tense, which is just a subset of point #5, below. Why?? Jacquetta is obviously looking back over her life -- there are several points that indicate this. 
4. She chickens out on making the link between this novel and The White Queen, which focuses on her daughter, Elizabeth, and portrays Jacquetta as a Yorkist supporter when in this novel, she's a die-hard Lancastrian, watching battles, taking refuge from marauding Yorkists with her queen, etc. Gregory never shows Jacquetta as questioning those loyalties, or thinking about who might make the better monarch for the country, or anything that might make her later switch of loyalties more convincing. Nor does she mourn for the Lancastrian cause when her husband rides home and announces he has switched sides. In a 400-plus page book told in the first person singular, that's a remarkable ommission.
5. The writing. Even if everything else had been wonderful, this would have been enough to destroy much of my pleasure in the book. It's repetitive and ponderous, in the extreme. For example: “Thank God I am home,” he says with tears in his eyes. “Thank God for bringing me home, safe home, to this my home and my wife and my children.” And a few sentences later, we have home, home, home, yet again. Argh.

This is rather disappointing, because in many ways, I am Gregory's target reader. I'm open to reading a novel that takes a few liberties around known historical facts, and I'm not crazy about books that simply dress up events with dialog to turn them into novels. I want to read historical fiction that does more than simply regurgitate the facts and love books that use fiction to shed new light on particular historical characters or events. One of my favorite historical novels of recent years is The Master of Bruges by Terence Morgan, which offers even more provocative theories about some of the same characters Gregory has written about; another is A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin, which is exceptionally well-written but crosses more boundaries. In neither case did that matter; both novels were so convincing and compelling that I simply couldn't put them down. And I've enjoyed several of Gregory's previous novels, including The Other Queen, which many Gregory fans didn't like, because I think she did an excellent job of showing how the old England of the aristocracy and the new England of self-made men and women clashed under the rule of Elizabeth I.


But this book... Well, let's just say I'm glad I read it as an electronic galley and that it will vanish on publication day, because I can't imagine ever wanting to re-read it, even as the literary equivalent of cotton candy. I'm sure it will sell, but I'd suggest getting it from a library before you waste your money on what was to me a 1.5 star book. (I did manage to finish it, after all...) I promise to be back with some good historical fiction suggestions over the weekend that might be a better way to spend the $$ you might otherwise invest in this novel...

A Pair of Brilliant Books About the Perils of Idealism

It's hard enough to find one fabulous and compelling book about a given subject, but to discover two that focus on roughly the same material in a short period of time; and then to have one of those be a novel that's been out for several years and the second a work of narrative non-fiction that won't be published for another month or two -- well, that's astonishing. The fact that the authors are a couple -- Geraldine Brooks (author of March) and Tony Horwitz (author of Midnight Rising) just makes it even more exciting, and left me longing to hang out at their dinner table and just listen to the conversation for, oh, a couple of weeks every year.

I had enjoyed Brooks's non-fiction writing so much that I had somehow convinced myself that her novels couldn't measure up -- yes, despite the Pulitzer that she won for March. Thank God I finally succumbed and picked up this novel, as it has gone straight on to my list of best books of the year. It's that rare bird -- a literary hommage that is neither slavishly devoted to the original (and thus nothing more than a tedious echo) nor untrue to it (making it nothing more than a modern day yarn in crinolines). In it, Brooks fills in the gaps in Louisa May Alcott's iconic novel, Little Women, by telling the story of what happened to their husband and father, Captain March, during his absence from the family. Alcott's March is an idealized paterfamilias; Brooks portrays him as a fallible dreamer forced to confront his own limitations and imperfect nature as he struggles to minister and teach in the midst of war. She does this so well, making him both sympathetic in his idealism and yet frustratingly irritating in his failure to understand the consequences of his inability to be practical or to compromise. At times while reading this novel I admit I sympathized with those March notices giving him "a look of the kind that I had become all too familiar with in the course of my life, a look that combined pity and exasperation."

Brooks's March is a utopian idealist, a vegetarian, someone who struggles to live out his dreams and fails to realize the impact of his dreams on those around him, whether it is his wife and children or the "contraband of war" (aka, the liberated slaves) whom he is sent to teach by the army when he proves demoralizing to the men to whom he had been trying to provide spiritual comfort. In the novel, she effortlessly blends the narrative as we know it from Little Women, giving the reader a plausible back story for Captain March that explains his personality and his actions, and leads right up to the point in Alcott's narrative where Marmee must travel urgently to Washington, where her husband is near death.
I think March blends perfectly with Little Women, although the former is the kind of nuanced book that could only have been written today. Nonetheless, I think it captures the ambivalence of those like March who believe absolutely in emancipation and yet have little idea of how to remake the world in a way that will be as welcoming to black as to white.

Intriguingly, Brooks's husband, Tony Horwitz, has written a non-fiction account of the efforts of another utopian idealist, John Brown, to eliminate the same evils of slavery that Captain March finds so abhorrent. (Indeed, in Brooks's novel, March impoverishes himself supporting some of Brown's projects and campaigns, at least in part to win the admiration of Marmee, portrayed in the novel as an even more ardent abolitionist.) But if March has little concept of what an egalitarian society might look like, Horwitz shows us that John Brown was one of the few abolitionists of his time who didn't just believe in wiping slavery from the face of the earth but acted in a truly egalitarian manner; he was, it seems, color-blind in a way that is still too rare today.

Horwitz's chronicle of events leading up to the doomed insurrection at Harper's Ferry is compelling, reminding us of the context in which he acted. Too often, looking aback at the Civil War, we forget that up until the time he and his tiny band of followers resorted to violence, the status quo was accepted, however reluctantly, across much of the North. Any conflict about slavery was largely confined to the issue of whether it would be allowed to spread to new territories and states in the West -- a conflict in which Brown participated and where his family experienced losses of their own. Arguably, John Brown's failure at Harper's Ferry paved the way for Abraham Lincoln, and the secession of the southern states, civil war and -- ultimately -- abolition.

Was Brown a madman? A monomaniac? Or a Messiah? Horwitz deals only tangentially with those questions, chronicling his life and experiences right up until his final days but letting readers draw their own conclusions. What I found more compelling about this book was Horwitz's ability to knit together not only Brown's tale but that of his companions at Harper's Ferry -- some of his sons, other idealists, drifters, free African-Americans and escaped slaves -- an oddball assortment who tried to force America to live up to the ideals enshrined in its own constitution and other founding documents. When the climax arrives and Brown's small troupe marches on Harper's Ferry, this becomes a book that is absolutely impossible to put down until the final outcome becomes clear. Even then, the final pages hold a poignant message, as Horwitz documents the link between one of John Brown's raiders and African-American poet Langston Hughes.

This is a more straightforward historical narrative than Horwitz has crafted to date -- most of his prior books have featured himself as a character, whether it's following in the footsteps of Captain Cook or becoming a Civil War re-enactor for Confederates in the Attic. He emerges as a thoughtful and articulate historian, who has crafted an impressive and immensely readable chronicle of John Brown, the history of slavery in the fledgling United States and -- above all -- the deserved return to the spotlight of all those who made possible the Harper's Ferry crusade, from financial supporters in Boston to the motley crew in the Virginia farmhouse waiting for the sign to risk their lives in support of an ideal. In the years to come, millions more men would do just that, most with far less pure motives, and I finished this impressive book wondering what John Brown would have made of the world that followed the Civil War, Reconstruction and, tragically, the rise of "Jim Crow" in the South.

I'd recommend both books very highly indeed; while you're waiting for Midnight Rising to appear in bookstores and libraries (it's due out October 25), go check out March and read or re-read it. They fit together in a way that is almost eerie, as Horwitz's imagined version of Captain March struggles to implement the ideals of the real John Brown. Certainly I found reading the novel made the history richer -- a tribute to Brooks's story-telling ability. I'm giving both books 4.6 stars.

Full disclosure: I received an advance review copy of Midnight Rising from Amazon.com as part of its Amazon Vine program.

Guess who outsells JK Rowling on AbeBooks?

I couldn't let this slip past without commenting. According to a post on the website of online bookseller AbeBooks (which I highly recommend, btw, it's amazing what you can find via their network of booksellers), Georgette Heyer outsells novelists like Harry Potter creator JK Rowling and Charles Dickens.

If your reaction was, "Georgette Who?", prepare to be educated. (Briefly) Heyer sold her first historical romance in 1921, when only 19. Between then and her death in 1974, she churned out a series of iconic Regency romances; I've even heard people comparing Jane Austen to her unfavorably. She also wrote a series of rather unmemorable police detective novels -- my grandfather loved those, but I wolfed down the Regency stories at a rapid rate, beginning at the age of 9 or 10. I still recall that my first Heyers were Arabella and Regency Buck, but I rapidly came to prefer those with an older, more independent heroine, like The Grand Sophy, Venetia, The Nonesuch Frederica or A Lady of Quality. Her best novels have wit and verve, and still have a place on my shelves.

Happily, Sourcebooks began reprinting the Heyer oeuvre a few years ago, so they've already made most of my favorites available once more, and I don't need to worry about covers hanging by a thread or not being able to find what I want on AbeBooks. No surprise to me that they are still in such hot demand (even though Shakespeare and Agatha Christie still outsell her!)

Epic Saga of an Epic Life

If you happen to be a historical fiction fan, and admirer of Margaret George's chunkster novels, by the time you add this 688-page monster to your collection you'll need to add a new shelf to accommodate them all...

But onto the book's contents, which, after all, is what this blog is about. Except that in this case, the length of this novel, which covers the final years of Elizabeth Tudor's reign (from the Spanish Armada to her death in 1603) is one of the issues in the content: it seems as if Margaret George has never had anyone tell her, look, you're in danger of repeating yourself here. Because while this is an often-fascinating and always well-researched novel about Tudor England, it seems that there isn't an event that it doesn't cover. That's why I read biographies, but not the reason I turn to historical fiction, which I expect to be a distillation of themes and ideas, not an encyclopaedia.

What does work in this book is the alternating points of view between Elizabeth and her cousin and rival, long-banished Lettice Knollys. Lettice dared to marry Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and possibly the only man Elizabeth ever loved; she was the mother of another of Elizabeth's favorites, Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who the queen later executed for treason. So alternating between the bitter and ambitious Lettice and the determined and resourceful queen is a clever approach, giving the reader two different and equally biased perspectives on events. For instance, when Elizabeth decides to ban all later portraits of herself from public view, she is removing unflattering portraits that might cause her enemies to try to take advantage of what they believe to be her weakness. To Lettice, the action is vanity, pure and simple. I found the episodes narrated by Lettice to be the most appealing and intriguing: she dallies with William Shakespeare, and her adventures are the author's way of showing us what some Elizabethans believed to be messages about contemporary affairs hidden within Shakespearean plays such as Richard II. Reading Elizabeth's point of view was more tedious, as it seemed to revolve around the same handful of concerns: containing the Spanish; reining in Essex's hubris; grieving as old counselors and friends die.

It took a few weeks for me to finish reading a book that I might have read cover to cover in only a few days for just this kind of reason; after a couple of chapters, I felt as if I was simply plodding through the pages. Whereas in her books about Henry VIII and Mary, Queen of Scots I didn't find the length any obstacle to my enjoyment, here it was definitely an impediment. George could have easily trimmed 200 pages from this book and, with some careful editing, have produced a book that kept all the essential ingredients and that was a more lively and focused narrative. As it stands, it's merely good -- a 3.8 star book that will probably only be read by historical fiction devotees. Certainly, no one else is likely to have the patience to make it to the end! Only mildly recommended, and only to historical fiction fans. It's certainly authoritative, but while it could end up being a kind of bookend to Margaret Irwin's trilogy (beginning with Young Bess, these books focus on Elizabeth's life leading up to her accession), it wasn't as enjoyable a book to read.

From the stage of the Hippodrome to the Emperor's box in Constantinople

"Theodora of the Hippodrome, of the brothel, could never have achieved so much if she had not been practical as well as wild." So writes novelist Stella Duffy of Theodora, the daughter of a bear-keeper in sixth-century Constantinople, who rose to become Empress of Byzantium, alongside one of that empire's strongest rulers, Justinian.

It's hard to find well-written historical fiction these days that is more than just another variant of a story told about the ancient Romans, the Plantagenets, the Tudors or the days of the French Revolution. But in this novel (already available in the UK; to be published in the US in September) Duffy tells the story of Theodora and her improbable feat. Born into a world which offered her little choice beyond taking to the stage of the Hippodrome as an acrobat and comedienne renowned, so history tells it, for lewd performances involving geese. (Read it for yourselves...) Offstage, like all actresses of the period, she earned money as a prostitute -- and the most she could hope for was to find someone who would take her on as a mistress for the short term; no man was allowed to marry a performer. But Theodora's life takes a surprising course just when it seems her hopes of some stability vanish and she discovers a new direction for herself, both personally and as a public figure.

The Constantinople that Duffy portrays so vividly in this fascinating novel is a world in which ordinary working men and women are prepared to literally come to blows over the pressing theological issues of the day, particularly the precise nature of Christ's divinity. That territory has proven to be a minefield for other authors, notably Anne Perry, whose recent foray into historical fiction set prior to 1850 (The Sheen on the Silk set in a later Constantinople) was deeply disappointing. Duffy succeeds triumphantly where Perry failed, painting a portrait in words of a woman whose face has come down to us through time in the form of the famous mosaics in Ravenna, Italy. Her Theodora is a pragmatist; hard-headed, ribald and too outspoken for her own good, her challenge to develop judgment, compassion and heart. And the world she inhabits is conjured up for us from the physical setting to its scents and sounds; its mores and the ribald dramas its masses prefer; the role of eunuchs and the importance of the various religious schisms -- Monophysite, Arian, etc. None of that ever feels overwhelming in Duffy's hands.

Best of all, Duffy doesn't make the mistake of romanticizing Theodora's story. Romantic love was largely absent in any modern sense in her era, and Duffy doesn't fall into the trap of trying to impose a 21st century ethos on her 6th century characters. True, the language is crisp and modern -- no "thees" and "thous" -- but the attitudes are very much of the time, with Theodora experiencing pain and pleasure but never really lapsing into sentimentality. That can make it harder to identify with Theodora as a person, perhaps, but not to enjoy or appreciate the book itself, which I simply couldn't put down.

This novel is a boon for historical fiction fans, especially those in search of a respite from the endless stream of books set in northern Europe from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Duffy has made her name in the UK with some of her contemporary novels short-listed for the Orange Prize; I'll be hunting for some of those as well as hoping that she pens a sequel to this excellent book, which ends as Justinian and Theodora become rulers of the empire.

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of the book via NetGalley.com. I expect that when it becomes available for purchase in the US that I'll be adding it to my permanent library.


For some other historical novels set outside the mainstream, try the following:

• Indu Sundaresan's trilogy about Moghul India, culminating in The Shadow Princess
• A Man in Uniform, Kate Taylor's novel set in the Paris of the Dreyfus scandal and the "Belle Epoque".
• Two novels by Jude Morgan, The King's Touch (based on the life of the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son) and Passion, which deals with the interlinked lives of Shelley, Byron, and Keats. 
• Beautiful Creatures by Tracey Chevalier, focusing on the life of a woman in obsessive quest of fossils in the early 19th century.