Boswellbaxter's Bookfest

[boswellbaxter]

Read The Favored Queen by Carolly Erickson (for the Historical Novels Review, so can't review here) and The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller (excellent).

[boswellbaxter]

I finished Three Maids for a Crown by Ella March Chase today. I had mixed feelings about this book. I thought the author did a good job of showing the distinct personalities of the three Grey sisters, who narrated the book, and the story moved along quickly. Sometimes it moved too quickly--it struck me as strange, for instance, that Katherine Grey didn't get to narrate the story of her last days. Instead, we just get the news that she died. There were, however, some quite moving scenes.

There are some strange historical errors here. None of them were so serious as to ruin the story, but they did have me muttering at Mr. Kindle. Jane, Duchess of Northumberland, is called Anne in the novel; the Earl of Devon is called "the White Rose of Lancaster"; the Countess of Salisbury executed by Henry VIII is called the Countess of Shrewsbury; Catherine de Medici is said to have murdered Jeanne of Navarre 19 years before Jeanne actually died; it was the younger John Dudley, not Ambrose Dudley, who married one of Somerset's daughters; Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, is described as Margaret Beaufort's master of horse.

My main quarrel was with the way the Dudleys and Elizabeth I were portrayed. One wouldn't expect Katherine and Mary Grey to speak favorably of Elizabeth, but the portrayal of her in this novel reminded me of her portrayal in "Blackadder"--except that here, of course, it's not meant to be funny. (I also found it rather unlikely that the Grey sisters would be allowed to trade insults with Queen Elizabeth as long as they do here.) As for the Dudleys, they have no redeeming qualities here. They're so nasty, in fact, that the author throws in plot elements that are never resolved just to reinforce their nastiness. Northumberland is overheard discussing a plan to murder a boy in order to substitute his body for Edward VI's, for instance, but we never learn whether he actually did this or not. Likewise, there's a strong hint that he's poisoning Jane Grey, but it's never explained why, and the plot line soon disappears from the novel. Frances Grey, of course, is given the usual villainous treatment, though some shred of sympathy for her just squeaks through at the end.

In the way she chooses to end Mary's story, the author makes a change to history. It's not a drastic one, and she comes clean about it in the author's note, but the same effect could have been achieved while remaining true to historical fact.

Historically, after marrying in secret, Mary Grey was imprisoned for a while and was finally released, although she was never allowed to see her husband or to raise his stepchildren after his death. She moved to London and made a happy enough, though brief, life for herself there as a widow living in her own home, and did become close to one of her stepchildren. In the novel, she is allowed to raise her husband's children and is living with them on his farm in the country when the novel ends.

[SonjaMarie]

Ah, but it's just those kind of mistakes that annoy me and make me want to throw it at the wall. Apparently Jane was prescient to know that Catherine supposedly killed Jeanne 19 years before it happened, and yet didn't see her own death coming!

SM

[boswellbaxter]

It's been a while since I've updated this:

Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey (through Net Galley)

Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory (through Net Galley)

Sister Queens by Julia Fox (NF about Catherine of Aragon and Juana "the Mad")

Heart of a Rose by Hilda Lewis (Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII)

[boswellbaxter]

Read recently:

HF

Lionheart by Sharon Penman

The Reluctant Queen by Geraldine Evans

NF

Mary I: England's Catholic Queen by John Edwards

The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell by John Schofield

The Boleyns: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Family by David Loades

Mary Boleyn by Josephine Wilkinson

[boswellbaxter]

My final reading for 2011:

Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Steers Jr.

The Unexpected Miss Bennet by Patrice Sarath

The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln by Kate Clifford Larson

Mary, the Infamous Queen by Maureen Peters

Jane, Beloved Queen by Jean Evans

Philip of Spain, King of England: The Forgotten Sovereign by Harry Kelsey

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James