The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen

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The Boleyn King We all know what happened to Anne Boleyn: having failed to give Henry VIII the son and heir he needed, the King turned his attentions to Jane Seymour and Anne was beheaded, leaving behind her only child, the future Elizabeth I. But what if Anne had given birth to a living son? What if that son grew up to become King of England? Laura Andersen takes that idea as her starting point for The Boleyn King and weaves a whole alternative history around it.

At the beginning of the novel, King Henry IX, better known as William (the fictional son of Anne and Henry), is approaching his eighteenth birthday. His uncle, Lord Rochford, has been acting as Lord Protector for the last few years but William is now almost ready to begin ruling in his own right. Rochford is a clever, ruthless man and he has not done a bad job of ruling the kingdom, but as William prepares to take over there are still several problems and potential conflicts to be dealt with.

First, there’s the threat posed by the Lady Mary, William’s half-sister, who many of England’s Catholics would prefer to see on the throne. Then there’s the prospect of war with France. Most worrying of all for William is news of a document known as The Penitent’s Confession which claims to throw William’s paternity into doubt and which, if it falls into the wrong hands, could lose him his throne.

Amidst all of this drama and danger, there are only three people whom William feels he can trust: his other sister, Elizabeth, and two more fictional characters, Dominic Courtenay and Minuette Wyatt. Dominic is his best friend and William has come to rely on his honesty and advice, while Minuette, the daughter of one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies, has been raised as a royal ward and is very close to William. Elizabeth, Dominic and Minuette are the people William turns to for help in ensuring the security of the kingdom – and locating the Confession before his enemies find it first.

The Boleyn King is part alternate history, part mystery and part romance. It was the history part that I enjoyed the most; the book raises some fascinating questions and although these weren’t explored in a lot of depth, it’s still very intriguing to think about all the different ways in which just one small change (the birth of one boy) could affect the future of England, Europe and maybe even the entire world. If there really had been a Henry IX, that must mean there would have been no Edward VI. Does that also mean that Lady Jane Grey would never have briefly taken the throne and then lost her life and that Mary would never have become Queen either? What if Henry IX had children of his own? Would the outcomes of wars have been changed? What about the implications for religion, culture, art, literature and exploration? The possibilities are endless.

The mystery storyline, which begins with the death of a friend of Minuette’s and ends with the search for the hidden document, was quite enjoyable too, but the romantic aspect of the book was of less interest to me. Elizabeth, as she apparently was in real life, is in love with Robert Dudley, while both William and Dominic develop feelings for the same woman – who happens to be Minuette. Their love triangle is not resolved in this book but as this is the first in a trilogy, I expect it will continue to play a big part in the next two books.

There was a lot to like about The Boleyn King, but I did have one big problem with it. William, Elizabeth, Minuette and Dominic could have been modern day teenagers – they never felt to me like people who could really have lived during the Tudor era. The way they spoke, the way they thought and the way they behaved just wasn’t right and there was no real sense of the time period. When I read historical fiction I like to feel completely immersed in another time and place but that never happened with this book.

The next two in the trilogy are The Boleyn Deceit and The Boleyn Reckoning. While I would be interested to know how the story develops, I’m not sure if I enjoyed this book enough to want to read two more. Maybe I’ll change my mind if I come across them in the library but at the moment I’m not planning to continue.

The Asylum by John Harwood

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The Asylum Imagine waking up one day to find yourself in an asylum, with no memory of how you came to be there. You know your own name – Georgina Ferrars – but the doctor tells you that you had admitted yourself as a voluntary patient the day before under the name Lucy Ashton. The clothes and belongings you’ve brought with you, marked with the initials LA, seem to confirm this, but you’re sure that’s not who you are. Sending a telegram to your uncle, a London bookseller, you wait for him to prove your identity, but when the reply comes it isn’t what you’d hoped for at all. Apparently Georgina Ferrars is safe and well at home…which means you must be an imposter.

This is the nightmare scenario in which a lonely young woman finds herself in this atmospheric gothic tale of betrayal and deceit, secrets, insanity and identity. To describe the plot in any more detail would risk giving too much away, so I won’t try – I think it’s best if you begin this novel knowing no more than I’ve already told you above as part of the fun is in wondering what’s going on and coming up with theories of your own. And I certainly came up with plenty of theories…and had to keep changing and revising them as new clues and revelations came to light!

As I read The Asylum I felt as confused and bewildered as our narrator did. Was she really Georgina Ferrars, as she claimed to be? I thought so at first – I liked her and wanted to believe her – and I was convinced she must be the victim of a conspiracy. But who exactly was involved in the conspiracy? The doctor? The uncle? The fake Georgina? After a while, though, I began to have doubts. Was the narrator herself the fake after all? I couldn’t believe she was telling lies, so did that mean she was deluded or just suffering from a total loss of memory? There were so many questions to ask and so many possible answers.

The story is set in the 1880s and written in the style of a Victorian sensation novel. Like Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and other books of that era, parts of the story are told in the form of journal entries and letters. These help to fill in some gaps in our knowledge so that we can start to understand what is happening to Georgina. There were other aspects of the novel that reminded me of Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and one of the letter writers finds herself in a situation similar to the heroine of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, but there were enough original ideas here to make this an intriguing and absorbing story in its own right.

Most of the action takes place within the confines of Tregannon House (the private asylum on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, in which Georgina becomes trapped) and the atmosphere Harwood creates is wonderfully claustrophobic and eerie. I really sympathised with Georgina’s situation and shared her terror and bewilderment. My only criticism of the book is that the ending – in particular the way in which one of the villains of the story is eventually dealt with – felt a bit too melodramatic in comparison to the rest of the book.

This is the third John Harwood novel I’ve read and while I think the first, The Ghost Writer, is still my favourite, I enjoyed this one more than the second, The Séance. They’re all great, though, and if you like this sort of book you can’t go wrong with any of them!

Mr Mac and Me – a Shiny New Books review

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Just a quick post today to point you in the direction of the new Christmas ‘Inbetweeny’ issue of Shiny New Books which is packed with reviews, features and a Christmas quiz.

SNB

I was pleased to provide a review of Esther Freud’s latest novel, Mr Mac and Me. This is what the book is about:

Mr Mac and Me In Mr Mac and Me, Esther Freud paints a beautiful portrait of a small rural community and the ways in which it is affected by war. Our narrator is young Thomas Maggs, a quiet and observant thirteen-year-old boy who has grown up in the Blue Anchor Inn on the Suffolk coast. Life is difficult for Thomas and often very lonely; his father is an alcoholic, his mother is still grieving for the six babies she has lost, and his two sisters are growing up and have lives of their own now. Thomas wishes he could go to sea, but knows that his twisted foot will prevent him from pursuing that particular dream.

In 1914, two newcomers – a man and a woman – arrive in the village and begin to paint the flowers and the scenery. The man is the Scottish artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the woman is his artist wife, Margaret MacDonald. With Margaret frequently returning to Glasgow, Mackintosh spends his time walking in the countryside, sketching, taking notes and looking out to sea. Recognising another lonely soul, Thomas befriends ‘Mr Mac’, joining him on his walks and watching him as he paints.

With the outbreak of war, however, the villagers become suspicious of Mr Mac and soon even Thomas begins to wonder why his new friend is receiving letters from Germany addressed to Herr Mackintosh. Has Mac really come to Suffolk just to admire the scenery or is he up to something more sinister?

You can read the rest of my review here and don’t forget to explore the rest of the new issue!

Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald

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Zemindar What a great book! A wonderful setting, a beautiful romance, characters I really cared about, an exciting story and lots of fascinating historical detail…definitely one of my favourite books of the year. I could see the influence of other books that I love – The Far Pavilions, Gone with the Wind and Jane Eyre – so it’s maybe not surprising that I loved this one too!

Zemindar is set in India before and during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Laura Hewitt, a single woman of twenty-four, is accompanying her newly married cousin Emily and her husband Charles Flood on a trip to India as Emily, at eighteen, is considered too young to travel without another female in the party. Laura is happy to accept the position of paid companion – her parents are both dead and she has no money of her own – but she is also aware that it may not be a good idea to be in such close proximity to Charles, whom she had been in love with herself before he turned his attentions to the younger, prettier Emily.

After a brief stay in Calcutta, Laura and the Floods travel to Lucknow where Charles is planning to make the acquaintance of his half-brother Oliver Erskine who lives a few days’ journey away on the estate of Hassanganj. Charles and Oliver have never met but knowing that his brother is unmarried and seems likely to remain that way, Charles hopes to convince Oliver to make him his heir. On arriving at Hassanganj, however, it quickly becomes obvious that this will not be an easy task. As a zemindar (hereditary landowner), Oliver has been used to leading an unconventional lifestyle on his huge and isolated estate and is not the sort of man who can be made to do anything he doesn’t want to do!

Laura and Emily are both fascinated by Oliver Erskine, though while he shows nothing but kindness to Emily, Laura finds him arrogant and annoying. But when mutiny breaks out among the Indian sepoys in the army and Hassanganj comes under attack, she begins to see a different side to Oliver. Taking refuge in the Residency in Lucknow where the British army is preparing to withstand a siege, Laura must decide how she really feels about Oliver and whether she can see a future for herself in India. First, though, she needs to stay alive…

There are so many things I loved about this book it’s difficult to know what to focus on first, but I think I should start by praising Valerie Fitzgerald’s beautiful writing. Zemindar was published in 1981, but I almost felt I was reading something written by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë. Laura’s story is told in the first person and her narrative voice sounds exactly as the voice of a 19th century woman should sound. The descriptions of India – the landscape, the culture, the contrast between life in the British colonial communities and the mofussil (the rural areas) – are stunning too.

The story takes place during a turbulent time in the history of British India, but don’t expect this to be a fast-paced novel – some parts are very slow allowing time for character development and fleshing out of the historical background. No previous knowledge is needed as we have the opportunity to learn along with Laura as the events leading up to the Indian Rebellion unfold. Later in the book, when the British begin to crowd into the poorly-fortified Residency for safety there are some quite graphic descriptions of the brutality and atrocities committed by both sides as Lucknow finds itself under siege and tales of even greater horrors suffered by those in Cawnpore reach Laura’s ears. Obviously we are seeing things from a British perspective but there’s some sympathy for the Indian point of view as well; having spent most of his life at Hassanganj, Oliver understands India and its people in a way that most of the other characters don’t and he tries to pass this understanding on to Laura.

The relationship between Laura and Oliver is a lovely and poignant one which takes its time to develop and is not without its difficulties and misunderstandings. At times it reminded me of the romance in Gone with the Wind, though while Oliver is similar in some ways to Rhett Butler, the quiet, sensible Laura is more like Jane Eyre than Scarlett O’Hara. Because I liked Laura and Oliver so much I was completely absorbed in their story and hoping for a happy ending for them both – it was not at all obvious whether they were going to get one so I was kept in suspense right to the end!

I hoped I’ve made it clear, though, that this book is not a fluffy romance or a silly bodice ripper. The romance is only one element of the story and is sometimes pushed into the background while we concentrate on the history, the battles and the sieges. My only disappointment on reaching the end of the book was discovering that Zemindar was Valerie Fitzgerald’s only novel. I know M.M. Kaye’s Shadow of the Moon is set during the same period so I’m hoping to read that one soon and see how it compares.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

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Don Quixote Reading Don Quixote has been a year-long project for me in 2014. After reading Clarissa over a twelve month period as part of a readalong in 2012 and then War and Peace in 2013 I decided to tackle another of the very long, intimidating classics on my Classics Club list, this time on my own. Now that I’ve finished I don’t know why I had ever been intimidated by it. Yes, it’s long (over 1,000 pages in most editions) and old (originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615) and a translation, but I didn’t find it difficult to read at all. It’s fun and imaginative and entertaining – and I loved it.

Don Quixote is the story of a gentleman of La Mancha who has spent so many years reading books of chivalry and romance that he has come to believe the tales they tell are true. Inspired by the heroes of his favourite books, he decides to become a knight errant and go out into the world in search of adventures. Renaming himself Don Quixote and his horse Rocinante, he convinces a neighbouring peasant, Sancho Panza, to join him as his squire. With Sancho at his side, Don Quixote sets out to right wrongs, fight duels and rescue damsels in distress, in the hope that his valiant deeds will win him the love of the beautiful (and largely imaginary) Dulcinea del Toboso.

As Don Quixote and Sancho travel across Spain they have one adventure after another, each one headed with a long and intriguing chapter title such as “Of the strange adventure which befell the valiant Don Quixote with the bold Knight of the Mirrors” or “Which deals with the adventure of the enchanted head, together with other trivial matters which cannot be left untold”. As you read on, however, it soon becomes obvious that these ‘adventures’ are not quite as amazing as they sound and usually have a logical explanation.

Many people, even without reading the book, will have heard of the famous ‘tilting at windmills’ episode. There are many, many other similar episodes in the novel but this one appears near the beginning which is probably why it’s the best known. If you’re not familiar with it, on approaching some windmills in a field Don Quixote becomes convinced they are giants and attacks them with his sword:

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that, turned by the wind, make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”

This is a pattern that is repeated over and over again throughout the novel: Don Quixote mistakes inns for castles and flocks of sheep for armies – and even when Sancho points out the truth he still insists that he is right. The castles and the armies must have been enchanted by great wizards, he says, so that they appear to be inns and sheep. As the story progresses, Don Quixote’s fame spreads and he is thought of as insane and Sancho as an idiot. The response of some of the people they meet can be very cruel and it’s quite sad to see how Don Quixote and Sancho are ridiculed, scorned and made the target of elaborate practical jokes. I wouldn’t describe this as a sad book, though; in fact, it’s a very funny one. The humour doesn’t always work (being four hundred years old and in translation, maybe that’s not surprising) but at times it’s hilarious!

As well as the adventures and the humour, there are lots of songs, poems and ballads interspersed with the prose. There are also lots of stories-within-stories – almost everyone they meet on their journey has a long and tragic story of their own to tell – and many of these have no relevance to the rest of the novel. For example, a lot of time is devoted to the tale of a Christian who was held captive by Moors in Algiers and has escaped back to Spain – nothing to do with Don Quixote, but apparently based on Cervantes’ own experiences. This is why the novel is so long and why you need to have some patience with it! Reading this book over a period of several months was the perfect strategy for me as the episodic nature of the story meant that I could leave it for a few weeks and still get straight back into it when I picked it up again. Breaking it up into small sections kept it feeling fresh and interesting so that I never felt bored or overwhelmed.

A quick note on the translation now. There have been many English translations of Don Quixote over the years but not really having any idea which to choose, I started reading the 1885 John Ormsby translation (in the public domain so free to download from Project Gutenberg and other websites) and I found it perfectly readable so decided just to stick with it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that translation to everyone as it does use some archaic terms and feels ‘old’ but that’s what I prefer when I’m reading an old book so it wasn’t a problem for me. Whichever may be closest to the literal translation, Ormsby’s description of Don Quixote as “Knight of the Rueful Countenance” just sounds better to me than, for example, Edith Grossman’s “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”. It’s a matter of personal taste, though, so it’s probably a good idea to look at a few different translations and find one that suits you before you embark on such a long novel!

Much as I enjoyed this book it did sometimes feel as if I was never going to finish it, so I was pleased to reach the end. I’m going to miss Don Quixote and Sancho, though, after spending so much time with them this year!

The Lie by Helen Dunmore

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The Lie With 2014 being the centenary of the First World War, I had intended to read lots of war-related books this year. For some reason, though, that hasn’t happened; this is only the second or third I’ve read. Actually, I did start to read The Lie in January but wasn’t in the right mood for it and decided to leave it and try again later. That was obviously the correct decision because this time I was drawn into the story from the beginning.

The Lie is set in Cornwall in 1920 and tells the story of Daniel, a young man who has just returned from the war to the village where he grew up. Things have changed during his absence and both of his parents are now dead. Homeless and alone, Daniel is grateful for an offer of food and shelter from Mary Pascoe, a reclusive elderly woman who had known his mother. As Daniel works on Mary’s land in return for the help she is giving him, he has plenty of time to think and reminisce.

Some of his memories are of his childhood, growing up with Frederick and Felicia, the children from the big house where his mother worked as a cleaner. Others are more recent memories – terrible, haunting memories of the war, where he witnessed Frederick’s death in the trenches. Struggling to come to terms with what has happened to his friend, Daniel is reunited with Frederick’s sister, Felicia, now a young war widow with a little girl of her own. Felicia is also grieving, having lost both her husband and her brother, and she and Daniel are able to offer each other some comfort. But when Mary Pascoe asks Daniel to do something for her, a lie is told which could threaten his chance of future happiness.

This is a quiet, slow-paced novel and requires some patience from the reader, but Daniel is an interesting character who is worth getting to know. While the story jumps backwards and forwards in time, covering three different periods in Daniel’s life, the transitions from one to the other feel smooth and natural and each strand of the story explores several different aspects of the Great War. First there are the childhood sections which depict the class divide that existed in pre-war Britain: the intelligent, literary Daniel has to leave school at eleven to start working, while the less academic Frederick is sent to private school. The scenes that are actually set during the war describe all the horrors of life in the trenches, and finally, the parts of the story set in 1920 show us how the war has changed Daniel, his community and the wider world forever.

Daniel is our narrator but Frederick is a constant presence in the book and in Daniel’s mind. The relationship between the two men forms a big part of the story and the circumstances of Frederick’s death (leading to another lie being told) haunt Daniel to the point where he imagines he sees his old friend standing by his bed covered in the mud of the trenches. But I particularly liked the portrayal of Frederick’s sister, Felicia, and can only imagine how difficult life must have been for a young woman, widowed and alone with a baby to raise amid the aftermath of war.

Although I did find a lot to like about The Lie, it didn’t quite have the emotional impact on me that I would have expected from a novel dealing with such a tragic subject and for that reason I can’t say that I loved this book. It’s the first Helen Dunmore book I’ve read, though, and I’m hoping I might enjoy one of her others more than this one.

Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb

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Assassins Quest I’ve finished the Farseer Trilogy and now I feel bereft! After the cliffhanger ending of the previous book, Royal Assassin, I immediately moved on to the final instalment but now I wish I’d waited a while so that the whole experience wouldn’t have been over so quickly. This particular book wasn’t my favourite of the three – I had a few minor problems with this book that prevented me from enjoying it as much as the first two – but I can’t express how much I loved this trilogy as a whole.

It is almost impossible to discuss the final book of three without giving away things that happened in the previous two, so be aware that there will be spoilers throughout the rest of this post! If you’re new to Robin Hobb it wouldn’t be a good idea to start with this book anyway – Assassin’s Apprentice is where you need to begin.

Assassin’s Quest is slightly different from the first two Farseer novels because, while those two were centred around Buckkeep and its inhabitants, in this third book Fitz is on a mission that will take him across the Six Duchies and beyond. It feels more like a traditional fantasy adventure novel – and in fact, it does contain much stronger fantasy elements than the previous books. We learn more about the Wit and the Skill – and both of these types of magic are used in ways I hadn’t realised was possible – and we even meet some dragons (which isn’t surprising, as there’s one pictured on the book cover). While I thought the strengthening of the fantasy elements felt like a natural development as Fitz ventures further into the Realm of the Elderlings, I did prefer the more subtle fantasy atmosphere of Assassin’s Apprentice and Royal Assassin.

This novel picks up the story where Royal Assassin ended, with Fitz believed to have died at the hands of King Regal and his coterie. We, however, know that he has only left his body temporarily to join his wolf, Nighteyes, with whom he is Wit-bound. After a slow start in which Fitz returns to human form and has to come to terms with no longer being a wolf, he finally sets out on his quest. His aim is to hunt down Regal and kill him, but this proves to be more difficult than he expected and eventually he becomes aware that he has allowed himself to be distracted from what should have been his real purpose: finding Verity, his beloved uncle and rightful King of the Six Duchies.

Verity left Buckkeep halfway through the previous novel to go in search of the legendary Elderlings in the hope that they would help him to defeat the Red Ship Raiders. He has never been seen since, but Fitz is sure he’s still alive – he can sense Verity’s presence with his Skill and hear his command (“Come to me!”) in his mind. This certainty that his King is waiting for him is what keeps Fitz focused on his task, even when he wants nothing more than to return to Buck and look for Molly, the woman he loves, now only visible to him in Skill dreams.

As Fitz and Nighteyes travel across all of the Six Duchies and on into the Mountain Kingdom they are joined by some old friends, as well as making new ones such as Starling, a minstrel, and Kettle, an old woman who clearly knows a lot more about the Skill than she wants to admit to. That, by the way, was one of the little things that annoyed me about the book. It seemed that on a mission where everybody needed to pull together, every one of the party was keeping secrets from the others, making cryptic comments when a simple explanation could have saved so much trouble. Speaking of secrets and cryptic comments, we do learn quite a lot about the Fool in this book. However, the revelations that are made about the Fool just seem to raise more questions than they answer!

Unlike the first two books which I loved from the beginning, it took me a while to really get into Assassin’s Quest; the opening section with Fitz learning to be human again seemed to go on forever. After the journey got underway, I was quickly drawn into the story once again and became so absorbed in Fitz’s world I was dreading reaching the end of the book – especially as I was sure it wouldn’t end happily. This is a big, thick book (with over 800 pages in the edition I read) and there were a few points where I thought the story started to drag. I didn’t mind persevering through the slower parts, though, because there are some truly fantastic moments in this book, my favourites being the breathtaking scenes set inside Regal’s palace at Tradeford.

So, do Fitz and his friends find Verity and if so, has he succeeded in enlisting the help of the Elderlings? Will Fitz have another chance to kill Regal? Despite my spoiler warnings, I’m not going to answer those questions here. I will just say that I found the ending (the final two or three chapters, really) every bit as sad as I’d expected it to be, and yes, I cried. I’m not always a fan of happy, fairytale endings but after all the misery Fitz and the other characters had gone through in this trilogy I think I would have liked one here! As for the way everything was wrapped up in the last few pages in the style of an epilogue, I didn’t find that very satisfying either. I realise, though, that we’ll meet Fitz again later in the Tawny Man Trilogy and I’m looking forward to reading those books – but not until I’ve read the Liveship Traders first!