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Hugh and Bess

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Misfit
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Location: Seattle, WA

Post by Misfit » Sat August 8th, 2009, 6:23 pm

[quote=""boswellbaxter""]Maybe he sets aside a little tag time each day. He doesn't seem to have tagged Philippa Gregory's latest yet--I think that's a glaring omission there![/quote]

I'm sure he'll notice that sometime soon. I still loved the tag on the 1950's VHS of My Cousin Rachel. Why.........
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

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love_uk
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Location: Milwaukee & Northumberland

Post by love_uk » Thu August 27th, 2009, 7:46 pm

[quote=""love_uk""]I've just become a member & this is my very 1st post! Just finished The Traitor's Wife yesterday - now must run out & get Hugh & Bess.

Thanks, Susan![/quote]

Just finished Hugh & Bess - so happy to see the characters continuing - enjoyed it very much!
Joan

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter. ~Thomas Helm

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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Thu August 27th, 2009, 9:16 pm

Thanks, Joan!
Susan Higginbotham
Coming in October: The Woodvilles


http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/
http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/

StevenTill
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Post by StevenTill » Mon September 14th, 2009, 11:33 pm

Hugh and Bess was a very good novel. I'd recommend it for sure. I posted my review of it on my site a few weeks back: http://steventill.com/2009/08/10/review ... ginbotham/

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Frigate
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Post by Frigate » Fri December 11th, 2009, 8:43 pm

The Traitor's Wife is currently in my to-read pile at home (have no idea what I'm saving it for!) so it's good to see there is more from where that came from and it has some good reviews. Maybe I'll get through my current stack soon and get moving on my "stash". By the way, Misfit - I love the title of your journal! Home with (three) cats is the best place to be (with a book or two of course!)

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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Fri December 11th, 2009, 9:26 pm

Thanks Frigate. I've just got my hands on Susan's latest and hope to dig into it very soon.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

traveldog
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Post by traveldog » Thu May 13th, 2010, 4:54 pm

((I think it's okay to pick up a thread like this, one that has been inactive for a while, if you want to add a comment on the topic. Hope so --and welcome directions if I should be doing something else).

I just read "The Traitor's Wife" followed immediately by "Hugh and Bess" -- and I highly recommend that sequence, and the immediacy of it, to anyone who hasn't read them yet. The earlier book is jam-packed with events, a very high, rapid roller coaster some of the time. And ultimately it's a very wrenching tale, particularly so since these things (both external and on occasion within their hearts) are happening to people that you've come to feel you know and that you like a great deal.

But that is the allure, I guess you would say, of historical fiction: certain things *did* happen and, if done honestly, the story has to be crafted around those things, not plotted in some more logical fashion to make a point or to come out all balanced and making sense. Sometimes life doesn't make sense, but it still happens and it still matters.

So it was good, very good, to take the anguished feelings you're left with at the end of the first book and be able to stick with those people you've come to care about, and their children, and see events go into more peaceful, (slightly) more secure times, to get a feeling of what their life and actions may have been in that setting. And to learn that you still like them. A lot.

The most outstanding feature of these books, to me, is the poignant, humorous, black-plus-white reality, and uniqueness of some of the chief characters. Well, really to all of the main ones, but particularly - to my mind - Edward II and Hugh-the-even-younger. There is something about them especially that stays with one, both the reader and apparently with the other characters as well. It makes sense, somehow, that those two are the ones with whom others - Eleanor and Bess respectively - can have real, non-faked and non-sappy 'conversations' even after they are gone.

The ending of Hugh and Bess -- the chance to go through the process of grief with Bess and the last 'conversation' -- is truly a gem.

Thank you, Susan -- I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for you to leave them when the stories were done. In fact, I wondered if that isn't how Hugh and Bess came about .... because neither you nor the reader wanted to leave those people just yet when you concluded The Traitor's Wife. I know it was true for this reader.

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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Thu May 13th, 2010, 5:35 pm

Thanks so much, Traveldog! And you're exactly right--I did hate to leave Hugh the youngest behind in The Traitor's Wife, so when I was fishing around for a second novel, his was the story I decided I wanted to tell.

The end of Hugh and Bess, by the way, shows the value of having an editor reading one's novel--the original self-published book ended more abruptly, and when it was republished by Sourcebooks, my editor thought that there needed to be some more of Hugh in the final pages.
Susan Higginbotham
Coming in October: The Woodvilles


http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/
http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/

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