‘Holding her robust infant, Beatrix murmured a prayer in her native Dutch. She prayed that her daughter would grow up to be healthy and sensible and intelligent, and would never form associations with overly powdered girls, or laugh at vulgar stories, or sit at gaming tables with careless men, or read French novels, or behave in a manner suited only to a savage Indian, or in any way whatsoever become the worst sort of discredit to a good family; namely, that she not grow up to be een onnozelaar, a simpleton. Thus concluded her blessing — or what constitutes a blessing, from so austere a woman as Beatrix Whittaker.’
Some people didn’t know Liz Gilbert until the film ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ came out, in fact I was surprised to learn how many people hadn’t known about or read the book. I’d really enjoyed the book and found the film ok, but thought it didn’t dwell enough on the psychological and spiritual aspects of her journey. It had a mixed reception at my book club where some really identified with her character, but others were screaming how lucky she was to have a publisher willing to fund her trip of a lifetime during her divorce as many have to continue getting the kids to school, going to work and only having the millisecond before sleep hit them to have anything resembling a spiritual or self-aware thought. I’d not expected the anger and jealousy that it evoked in some readers. So it was with trepidation that I approached her novel The Signature of all Things. If I’m honest I probably wouldn’t have sought it out, but I was in one of my favourite bookshops while on holiday in Wales and I saw it in the second hand section. It was such a beautiful book that I had to buy it and I flicked through it back at the holiday cottage, then was sucked in very quickly and all my planned reading went out of the window. I was stunned to be sailed around the globe from London to Amsterdam, Peru and Tahiti. Even more exciting was the heroine, Alma Whittaker, daughter of a famous explorer, plant hunter and botanist. I was drawn to her intelligence, her busy mind, her assertion that she is the equal of any man and the depths of her feelings.
The book begins be setting up Alma’s early life and family situation, so we meet her father and his beginnings in botany as a boy apprentice to a plant hunter- actually a punishment for some very sneaky thefts from Kew Gardens. His incredibly enterprising ideas mean that by the time Alma is born he is a very rich man, with a mansion in Philadelphia. His fortune has been made in the quinine trade, a medicine extracted from the Cinchona tree found in Peru then traded and grown around the world to produce a drug for malaria. At his home, White Acre, he and his wife have two daughters: Prudence their adopted daughter who follows an extraordinary path into abolitionism and Alma. Alma is a tall, large-boned girl who is described as ‘homely’, but is intelligent, determined and secretly contains well pools of sexual curiosity, all qualities that seem unusual for her gender in this time period. Her father’s belief that all people should be given the opportunities that enable them to manage others and excel in their own chosen field governs the household. ‘All’ really does mean all in William’s case and his daughters are given a thorough education at home, rivalling any man. Both he and his Dutch born wife are clearly progressives and Alma flourishes with the opportunities they give her to become a very accomplished botanist in her own right and perfectly able to develop her own projects and command the voyages necessary to hunt for the plant she has set her heart on. Unexpectedly, at an age when scholarly spinsterhood is expected to be her path, a painter visits White Acre and Alma falls deeply in love. This painter believes Joseph Boehme’s philosophy that all of nature contains a divine code, every flower and every creature – such as the Fibonacci sequence. Their two interests combine and while Ambrose is a utopian artist, often found to be painting orchids rather than studying them in a lab, they do have the same passion for nature. Where he saw life as divine and a guardian angel watching over him, Alma saw a life as a struggle where only the fittest survived, something she found out for herself when exploring:
“Then — in the seconds that remained before it would have been too late to reverse course at all — Alma suddenly knew something. She knew it with every scrap of her being, and it was not a negotiable bit of information: she knew that she, the daughter of Henry and Beatrix Whittaker, had not been put on this earth to drown in five feet of water. She also knew this: if she had to kill somebody in order to save her own life, she would do so unhesitatingly. Lastly, she knew one other thing, and this was the most important realization of all: she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died.“
Of course, this love is not the end of Alma’s story. Liz Gilbert isn’t going to let a man eclipse Alma or create a sappy rom-com ending to such a strong, feminist story. Alma and Ambrose represent two great schools of thought in the 19th Century, that of the spiritual and the scientific. These two schools of thought had equal status and often intermingled to this point, but as the century progressed a complete separation occurred where spirituality became a belief without reason and science became fact without a divine sense of wonder. Could the common ground that Ambrose and Alma thrive upon at first, survive the divide between their two disciplines? Make no mistake though, Alma is the protagonist here and she’s one of my favourite characters ever. I loved her drive (sadly lacking in this writer) and her preservation of it, no matter what. She can speak five languages at five years old! Oh and two dead ones. Her educational achievements aside, it was her confidence and self-belief that stood out to me. Yet here we are two centuries later in a crisis of confidence, with an epidemic of imposter syndrome and doubts about how to be women. Alma is wholly herself, even when at times that might seem steely, reserved and abrupt. She believes that everyone is the master of their own self, including women. It is sad that the introduction of Prudence to their family is the catalyst for Alma experiencing negative self- thoughts. She wishes to keep Prudence, who has been staying with the Whittakers since a family tragedy, but her presence is an opportunity for comparison – the ultimate thief of joy. Alma realises for the first time that she is not beautiful. She retreats into her work at moments of doubt or unhappiness, even extreme heartbreak and loss. It is her refuge and the one area of life that she can control and that she continues to be confident in. I truly admire her ability to continue. To live.
The research that Liz Gilbert must have undertaken for the verisimilitude of this novel is colossal. She writes with a 19th Century sensibility, keeping Alma completely grounded in her place and time. The first rule of creative writing – show, don’t tell – is so strongly in place that I felt like I was with Alma, only seeing or hearing things at the same moment she does. This brings such an immediacy to the novel that it gallops on at quite a right, especially considering this is the story of a 19th Century dowdy and academic spinster. It’s a book that a lot of people might not consider reading from the blurb, which is why it needs to be highlighted in this way. It ranges across biology, exploring, business, philosophy, science, the mystical and yes, the sexual. There are secrets kept all the way to the end that I really didn’t expect at all. I have to say that my favourite review of this book is a negative one. Mainly because it made me laugh out loud, but also because it unwittingly makes you want to read it.
“I was actually enjoying this and then at 49% a spinster has a spontaneous orgasm from holding hands with a dude in a closet.”
left by Goodreads Member, Sylvia, October 2nd 2015
I don’t know about you, but I’d want to read that book!
Meet the Author
Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, as well as the short story collection, Pilgrims—a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award-nominated journalist, she works as writer-at-large for GQ. Her journalism has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine, and her stories have appeared in Esquire, Story, and the Paris Review.
I was first introduced to Macbeth thanks to my crush on Sean Bean. I was living in Milton Keynes at the time and studying for my English Lit degree. We knew that Macbeth was coming in our final year and when we found out that Sean Bean would be playing the title role at our local theatre we had to see it. It was a production that had some unusual choices, but an incredibly clever banquet scene that has stayed with me. However, it was the more recent Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard film that I found absolutely spellbinding and moving in it’s depiction of Macbeth and his wife as two grieving parents. It gave some context to their actions in the play, particularly Lady Macbeth who is often depicted as a power hungry harpy who coerces her husband into a violent act that he’s unable to live with. I’ve always thought Lady Macbeth was done a disservice, depicted rather like Eve in the garden of Eden as a woman dissatisfied with her lot who convinces her husband to eat apples from the only tree God expressly told them not to touch. According to most dramatists she’s greedy, dissatisfied and power hungry. She was ripe for a rewrite and here it is in Lady Macbethad.
Gruoch has druid heritage and her grandmother prophesied that she would be Queen of Alba. She believes in this prophecy and will try her best to fulfil it. She was born the daughter of a King, even though her father has now been ousted. Her heart and desires are with Macbeth but she is the betrothed of Duncan, the heir elect and marriage to him should enable her to fulfil her destiny. Yet life at court comes with it’s difficulties, it’s lonely and uneasy to know every woman at court would do anything to be in her position. He coronation approaches, with the women keeping her at a distance and giving her the cold shoulder. An unexpected turn of events tears her plans apart and she’s forced to run for her life and leave her ambitions for the crown behind. Now she must fight just to survive, never mind the crown.
This was a really interesting take on the tale of Macbeth and a woman whose motivations are always unclear. There’s a feel of Eve about her, it is Macbeth who wields the knife yet in many depictions I’ve seen, the emphasis is on Lady Macbeth as the instigator of the killings. The evil temptress whispering in the blameless man’s ear. I was intrigued by a retelling of the story, based on a real woman who did marry a man called Macbethad who became the king of Scotland. The book starts as a fiction about Gruoch, but becomes an origin story for the character of Lady Macbeth. I thought these two women were brought together well, creating one character. She does have aspects of character that Shakespeare establishes in the play, becoming a scheming, power hungry woman. She’s also rather paranoid and even violent in her own right. However, whereas in the play we don’t know why she is this way, here we get her back story and have an opportunity to understand her a little better. Even if we don’t necessarily like her.
Macbethad seemed to be more balanced and measured in character. He stands out for this, which seems an irony when I expected to respond to Gruoch more sympathetically. There are other characters in the book based on real people from history, covering their family allegiances and their conflicts. I think it’s so difficult to marry historical facts with a fictional story in this way and I was impressed with the author’s attention to detail. She sets the book firmly in it’s Scottish setting by using Scottish Gaelic, as well as the stories and folklore of the area. She brought to life the conflict between the established pagan traditions and the growing practice of Christianity, something I found really interesting. Her descriptions of the place felt vibrant and alive, I could actually see it. She is equally vivid when it comes to the more brutal aspects of the story. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed immensely and I would definitely recommend it to those interesting in historical fiction and Shakespeare.
Meet the Author
Isabelle Schuler is a Swiss Hawaiian-American actress, writer and former Waterstones bookseller. She has a BA in Journalism and her screenplayQueen Hereafter was longlisted by the Thousand Films Screenwriting Competition in 2019. In 2020, Schuler adapted Queen Hereafter into her debut novel, Lady MacBethad. She lives in Hertfordshire.
“I collected the first bone when I was twelve… Such a tiny little bone, more like a tooth. I only kept it to keep him safe.” Kathryn Darkling, imprisoned in Holloway, is facing death by hanging for her vengeance killing. Haunted by a spirit, she still hopes to perform the ancient black magic that will free her soul, or her struggle to punish the mighty will have been in vain. Will the love of her life come to her aid? Or can she find a way to escape her fate?
Bone Rites is a dual timeline story, split between the early 1900s and 1925 when Kathryn Darkling is in Holloway, the women’s prison, where she awaits the date of her own execution, by hanging. While waiting Kathryn starts to tell her story to a priest, assigned to hear her final words and offer solace as she awaits death. She begins with the first time she found a bone and performed a rite, then works her way through to her training as a doctor in Edinburgh. All the while she is developing her practice of performing bone rites, a black magic focused on freeing her soul. As she tells the stories of her bones, I started to wonder about her version of events. Clearly she’s an incredibly intelligent and determined woman and I admired that, but should I be taking the owned of a convicted murderer? Is she a reliable narrator? She seems to be slipping into madness as the tale goes, but does that mean everything she’s telling us is a lie? The thing I most enjoyed was getting inside Kathryn’s head and trying to work out what makes her tick, rather like holding a counselling session with this imaginary character. As we drifted back into her early childhood, I became won over by this obstinate little girl who won’t be deterred from her purpose. We learn about how tough her upbringing was, alongside her little brother Freddie. I love a dark story with a sense of foreboding and I thought this was perfectly pitched for a Halloween read. It’s not a traditional ghost story but Kathryn is certainly haunted, like many of us are by our pasts. I thought the book perfectly fitted it’s timelines, one before and one after WW1 considering how much change and trauma happened in-between. I also enjoyed the LGBTQ+ representation in the novel, it’s fascinating when authors ‘write back’ to a time where minority groups are under represented. All in all this was a well- written piece of historical fiction with a rather macabre edge and an admirable heroine.
Out on Nov 1st from Aurora Metro Books
Meet the Author
Natalie Bayley is author of ‘Bone Rites’, ‘Lolita’s Daughter’, ‘The Secret Life of Grandmothers’, ‘The Witch Who Saved Paris’ and ‘The Lady Lyttle Murder Mystery’ series. Her dark thriller ‘Bone Rites’ was selected for the 2019 Blue Pencil long list, went on to be shortlisted for the 2021 Blue Pencil First Novel Award and was long listed for the 2021 Caledonia prize before becoming the Winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction. Natalie lives in NSW, Australia and enjoys ocean swimming and whispering to cats. Born in the UK, she’s been in sunny Australia since 2000. Her books are always about justice and how a seemingly powerless underdog can always find a way to fight back. My spooky historical fiction novel, BONE RITES, won the prestigious Virginia Prize for Fiction and is being published by Aurora Metro books October 2023. Enjoy!
What were our great poets before they were great? Long-time NHS doctor Mellany Ambrose has penned a historical novel about the time John Keats spent training in medicine before he chose to follow poetry. She discovered Keats had been apprenticed to an apothecary surgeon a few miles away from where she was working as a GP and it sparked her curiosity.
“Why hadn’t he become a doctor? How would such a supposedly sensitive individual react to the horrors of medicine in an era with no anaesthesia, antibiotics or antisepsis?” Mellany asks, explaining, “I’d struggled in our modern era; his was far worse. In my first week as a nineteen-year-old medical student, I had to dissect a body. I felt unable to process the shock and enormity of it and wrote a poem to help me cope. Did he write poems to express his emotions as I had? And what would it have been like to have the young Keats as your apprentice?”
The story is set in 1814. Thomas Hammond is an apothecary surgeon whose apprentice is eighteen-year-old local orphan, John Keats. Thomas sees John as a daydreamer who wastes time reading. Thomas failed to save John’s mother four years earlier, and when John criticises Thomas’s methods tempers flare on both sides. Despite their differences, Thomas and John begin to develop a grudging respect for each other with Thomas seeing a humanity in the way John relates to patients. Their relationship deepens into one more resembling father and son while Thomas’s true son, Edward, disappoints his father. Thomas realises John is gifted and would make a skilled surgeon, but to help John succeed Thomas must confront his own past mistakes. On the verge of qualifying as a surgeon, John unexpectedly abandons medicine for poetry, ending all Thomas’s hopes. Thomas is devastated and struggles to find meaning in his life and work. As he faces one final challenge, can the master learn some valuable lessons about life from his poetic apprentice before it’s too late?
Out now from Troubadour Publishing
Meet the Author
I worked as a hospital doctor and general practitioner in the NHS for nearly 30 years. My interest in Keats’s medical career arose when I discovered he’d trained as an apprentice close to where I was working as a GP. I spent many happy hours researching in the British and Wellcome Libraries and visiting sites related to Keats’s life and Georgian era medicine.
See my website mellanyambrose.com for more on Keats and the history of medicine
The Hidden Years is a tender-hearted and bitter sweet tale about how life can take unexpected turns. In fact John Lennon was right, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. She also explores how patterns emerge in life: we might find ourselves unconsciously choosing a path that repeats a pattern or takes us to somewhere that has a hidden importance in our lives. Belle has done something very impulsive. From the moment she met Gray they had a connection and now he’s invited her to Silverwood, a mansion next to the Helford River, where a group of his friends are living a different life. They are a creative collective, living as self-sufficiently as possible but dependent on the kindness of the house’s owner. Luckily he’s very fond of his nephew Arlo, one of the residents at Silverwood. As she leaves university and misses her exams for this uncertain life she has no idea that Silverwood holds secrets and some of them are quite close to home.
The author tells her story through a dual timeline; Belle’s story set in the 1960’s and then Imogen’s story, a young woman who visits Cornwall in the 1940’s. Imogen has been working for an agency that secures placements for young women who work with children. It’s mid- WW2 and Imogen is tasked with taking two young brothers down to Silverwood, a boy’s boarding school in beautiful and relatively safe surroundings. She soon finds out that life can change in an instant when she’s asked to temporarily for the school’s Matron who has fallen ill. Imogen takes the booking and finds she loves working with the young boys in the sick bay, feeling unwell and far from home. So, when she’s offered the chance to stay on she decides to take a chance and loves her work. She also makes friends with one of the teachers, Ned. They explore Cornwall on their days off and as the war comes ever closer Imogen makes the huge choice to serve her country, by training in nursing at a hospital in Truro. A bomb narrowly missing the school pushes her to use the skills she’s gained for the war effort. Meanwhile in the 1960’s Belle settles into life at Silverwood with Gray’s friends, trying to help out where she can and joining in with meditation sessions where the incense is more than a bit potent. She’s drawn naturally to Mrs Kitto, a lady of her parent’s generation who lives in a cottage on the estate. She’s slightly taken aback by Belle, because she reminds her of someone she once knew. Their afternoon visits become story sessions as Mrs Kitto tells Belle about a woman she used to know, back in the war.
I enjoyed both sections of this lovely story. Often with dual timelines the novel suffers because one narrative is much stronger than the other. Here I thought the author got the balance just about right. Since Imogen’s story is set during WW2 there’s obviously heightened drama and the decisions made can be life and death. However, I think the differences in the timelines complimented each other. The difference in moral expectations and behaviour is huge. There’s also a difference in how people make choices, creating a huge generation gap like the one between Belle and her parents. The fact that she leaves uni with her lover and is clearly living with him at Silverwood is difficult for her parents to understand and would have been unthinkable in the 1940’s when they were Belle’s age. It would be understandable to think that the 1960’s characters have it so much easier compared with their parents. Yet I could empathise with Belle, in fact without WW2 her generation wouldn’t have the freedom to make choices in the same way. Her father has high expectations for her and he wants her to buckle down and make life choices. After all, his generation had to lay their lives and their hearts on the line with often very little understanding of the person they were making promises to. Belle’s not quite ready to make a choice. Should Belle follow duty, when she could be an idealist and follow her heart? Singing with Gray’s folk band The Witchers comes very naturally to her when she’s got over her nerves. There are so many opportunities, how do you know which is the right path?
Imogen is doing her duty in her working life, but her heart is torn. She has a best friend in Ned. They love the same things, they’re comfortable together and have a similar outlook in life. She knows he’s starting to feel more for her than friendship, but also teaching at Silverwood is the rather enigmatic Oliver Dalton and there’s an immediate frisson between them. Although they don’t spend any time together, the pull towards him is hard to resist. When they finally do get a chance to spend time together during her work in Truro, could their spark develop into something more lasting? I found myself rooting for Ned, because he’s so kind and supportive. I thought they’d make a great team. There’s no denying her attraction to Oliver, but he’s more of a closed book and I felt life with him might be more turbulent. Which way would she choose?
I know this area of Cornwall well and it was very easy to imagine myself there as the author explores the scenery. The area was a Mecca for artists in the 1960’s and I loved the ideas that the Silverwood residents had for the place. It’s ripe to be an artistic retreat, offering creative and self- care workshops such as meditation. It’s such a now idea that I wanted to do it myself. I thought it was interesting how Belle reacted to these ideas, making decisions about which parts she’s supports and which isn’t for her. She’s intervened with one resident’s treatment of her son and calls an ambulance rather than watching her continue with homeopathic medicines and see the boy suffer, or perhaps die. That takes bravery and faith in her own convictions. When her family turn up in Cornwall will she get the space she needs to work out what’s best for her. As to Mrs Kitto, how does her story connect to Belle and what impact will this wartime story have on her choice? The historical detail shone through and seeing through Imogen’s eyes the arrival of the American soldiers, the preparations along the Cornish coastline for the D-Day landings and the bombing of Truro really does bring it alive. There’s a realisation that we’re all the product of our experiences and trauma can take a long time to heal, even several generations. I thought this was such such a bittersweet ending and it left me feeling a bit autumnal, sort of melancholy but glad for the experiences of love both women had known.
Out now in hardback from Simon and Schuster U.K.
Meet the Author
I came to writing quite late, after a career editing fiction at HarperCollins in London. My husband and I had moved out to Norwich with our three young sons and I’d had to give up my job and writing was something that I’d always wanted to try. I originally studied history, so it was wonderful finally to put my knowledge to good use and to write The Dream House, which is partly set in the 1920s in Suffolk and London.
Most of my novels are dual narrative, often called ‘time slip’, with a story in the present alternating with one set in the past. I love the freedom that they give me to escape into the past, but also the dramatic ways in which the stories interact. My characters are often trying to solve some mystery about the past and by doing so to resolve some difficulty or puzzle in their own lives.
The books often involve a lot of research and this takes me down all sorts of interesting paths. For The Glass Painter’s Daughter I took an evening class in working with coloured glass. My creations were not very amazing, but making them gave me insight into the processes so that my characters’ activities would feel authentic. For A Week in Paris I had to research Paris in World War II and the early 1960s through films and books and by visiting the city – that was a great deal of work for one novel. Last Letter Home involved me touring a lot of country houses with old walled kitchen gardens in search of atmosphere and to explore the different kinds of plants grown there.
Places often inspire my stories. The Memory Garden, my second novel, is set in one of my favourite places in the world – Lamorna Cove in Cornwall – which is accessed through a lovely hidden valley. A Place of Secrets is set in a remote part of North Norfolk near Holt, where past and present seem to meet. Southwold in Suffolk, a characterful old-fashioned seaside resort with a harbour and a lighthouse, has been a much loved destination for our family holidays and has made an appearance in fictional guise in several of my novels, including The Silent Tide and The Love Child.
Until recently I taught Publishing and Creative Writing part-time at the University of East Anglia, but now I’m a full-time writer, which felt like a bit step. My boys are all grown up now and finding their way in the world, but we still see a lot of them. My husband David is a writer, too (he writes as D.J. Taylor), so we understand each other’s working lives.
I find I have to have a regular routine with my writing, not least to keep the book in my head. My aim is to sit down at 9am every morning and write till lunchtime, then again the afternoon, but there is often something ready to interrupt this, not least our Labrador girl Zelda, so I go with the flow.
I hope that you are able to find my books easily and enjoy them – I am always happy to hear from readers!
Taken from Rachel’s Amazon author page on 18th Oct 23.
All I could say after reading the final sentence of the book was WOW! I couldn’t stop reading, the housework is completely neglected and I even forgot to eat lunch! Yes, I read this in 24 hours. This is the absolute best of her novels and I’ve enjoyed them all.
Dominique is making her way through Iceland to an old whaling ship called the Ormen. Stranded in a bay, the ship is going to be sunk out at sea and Dom wants to document it before it disappears from view together. Ormen was an unusual whaling ship being a sail and steam hybrid that became beached in the early days of the 20th Century near the small village of turf houses called Skúmaskot. When she reaches the ship she sets about turning the cabin into a base to explore from and puts up her tent. There’s one door in the ship that she wonders about, it’s made of carved oak and when she touched the handle it emitted such a feeling of evil she was taken aback. As she settles, she hears someone walking about on deck and she realises she’s not alone. Three more explorers join her – Jens, Samara and Leo. They have more up to date equipment and soon the four are documenting the ship and their discoveries as well as Leo’s parkour sessions. The questions start to mount though, is she wrong or are the other three suspicious or even slightly scared of her? What are the strange noises she can hear – banging could be gunfire or chains banging against the ship? There’s also a strange mix of footsteps and dragging something heavy in a steady rhythm. Who is the woman in the dress that she’s seen standing in the shallows? This is a strange place where light is limited, the village is deserted and there is a strange stone throne by the beach, said to be a Mermaid’s Throne. These are not Disney mermaids though, these mermaids have teeth and a song that will lure a man to his death.
There are different types of haunting in this tale. I could see examples of my own theory of hauntings in the woman seen by the edge of the sea. She feels like an imprint on the landscape. A place where heightened emotion and terrible events have left such a strong imprint that defies time. The sounds also seem to come from another place, a repetitive echo from time past. This is what I call a proper ghost story. It isn’t gory or a slasher’s tale, it’s old-fashioned creepy and blended beautifully with local folklore. The ship is from Scotland and this is where the folklore of selkies comes from, a race of seal women who have a dual nature. They can be nurturing and helpful, such as saving a child who’s in trouble in the sea. They can communicate with other aquatic creatures and assume a human form when on land. However, selkies can also be seductive luring men to her and often having hybrid children. At their worst Selkies can be violent and vengeful, but their need for revenge gives us a clue about why; people seeking revenge have usually been wronged in some way. Mermaids are also depicted as sirens, luring ships and men with their singing and often thought to lure ships onto the rocks. However, there is also a terrible element of coercion in their mythology, stories where a man steals an item from the mermaid and while he has that item in his possession she belongs to him and lives as his wife. If she finds the object the spell is broken and she can return to the sea. Of course in the fairy tale we have a mermaid who has to choose between her land and sea lives, she can have love but to have legs she must suffer excruciating pain and she can never use her voice. It’s a hard price to pay. Icelandic mermaids have all these qualities, but use their seductive charms to lure sailors to their deaths – a nice reversal of their capture by human men. The author describes Icelandic mermaids as having rows of pointed teeth too. There’s a sense of devouring their enemies, particularly those who have wronged them. Is this Nicky’s end?
I loved the tension between the group of four on the Ormen. Samara seems fine with Dom, but then she overhears a conversation with Leo where Samara seems terrified of her. She talks about ‘this time’ being different, but Dom can’t remember meeting them before. I loved this mix of psychological tension, the real dangers of the landscape around them and then the truth of what has happened to the previous crew of the ship and previous explorers who’ve also left their echoes here. I sensed a possible kinship between Jens and Dom, almost as if he already knew her. I was scared of Leo. There’s so much nervous energy in him, a rage running just under the surface that I feared might ignite at any point. Yet they’re also dependent on each other for their survival creating what feels like a truce between them, but how can a truce exist if they’ve never met? There are so many strange happenings, such as Dom’s dream of ponies running off a cliff followed by finding the skeletons of Icelandic ponies in a deep cave. I loved the bits of magic realism, such as Nicky’s leg. Everything about the voyage from Scotland is historically accurate and gives us such an incredible sense of place I can see it. However, Nicky’s broken ankle and wound start to heal in an usual way. She notices the grey colour of her newly healing skin and thinks she has an infection. The sensation is altered too, feeling rubbery and a little cold. As time goes on this patch of skin grows and she’s aware that the gap between her legs is becoming webbed. Could her legs be joining together? This could be a magical sort of protection against the assaults she suffers on a daily basis. It could also be a transformation. As the past starts to inform Dominique’s present I couldn’t leave the story and I was left with the worst kind of book hangover where I was stuck in the world and the feeling of the ending. It’s taken me two days to start another book but I can’t stop thinking about this one. In fact I’m already thinking about reading it again, a bit like watching The Sixth Sense again once you know the twist. This is a dark, disturbing ghost story of hauntings but also about the worst things human beings can do to one another, particularly men against women and the extraordinary ways they exact their revenge.
Out in Hardback now from Harper Collins
C J Cooke (Carolyn Jess-Cooke) lives in Glasgow with her husband and four children. C J Cooke’s works have been published in 23 languages and have won many awards. She holds a PhD in Literature from the Queen’s University of Belfast and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she researches creative writing interventions for mental health. Two of her books are currently optioned for film. Visit http://www.cjcookeauthor.com
After a few years building on the Practical Magic series, I was looking forward to seeing what Alice Hoffman would come up with next. She has based her story around the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne and his classic novel The Scarlet Letter and introduces us to two young women facing difficulties. Ivy is from a rich Boston family and when she finds herself pregnant at 16, she truly expects support. The father of her baby retreats into his wealthy family and the elite university he’s due to attend, taking no responsibility for the predicament they’re both in. Facing her pregnancy alone she talks to her parents who also wash their hands of her, not wanting the stigma or embarrassment. Ivy decides to leave home and climbs out of the bedroom window, setting out to see a friend who she knows will have an idea. She suggests they leave together and make their way out to a religious community she’s heard of in Blackwood, Massachusetts, with a charismatic leader called Joel Davies. When her father decides to look for her several months later he finds the worst, Ivy has a little girl called Mia and has become the leader’s wife. Mia grows up in Joel’s community and he decides who is in favour and what is a transgression. Everyone is punished, but the women particularly so – they might have their hair cut off or even be branded with a letter. Women are not allowed reproductive rights, but nor do they get to keep their children. Children belong to everyone and after a few days with their mother, sleep in dormitories. Books are not allowed and as she grows up books are Mia’s particular downfall. She finds her way to the public library and starts to read American classics like Little Women and Huckleberry Finn. Then she finds a copy of The Scarlet Letter, beautifully bound and very old. On the fly leaf is a dedication:
To Mia. You were mine and mine alone.
Is it perhaps her mother, who does show her special attention despite the rules. She tucks the book into her dress and keeps it. Reading in the barn, where she has loosened a board to keep her treasures behind. She has a small landscape painting of the view from the community’s buildings. Land that was left to Joel by his first wife Carrie. Carrie was also a rich girl, but one who had assets to bring to this Puritan community. Carrie was a great painter, but was often punished lest she become too vain about it. On the back of this painting is an inscription about the lands she owns and a promise that Joel will get to keep it ‘as far as the eye can see’.
One day during the apple harvest, a terrible accident happens and Ivy is killed. Mia is distraught, but as her mothers body is carried away she grabs the red boots that Joel uncharacteristically bought for her mother to have as a keepsake. She knows that now it’s either run or stay forever. Grabbing The Scarlet Letter and the painting she takes a leap, out of the bedroom window and across the fields to the library. The librarian had noticed Mia lurking in there, reading in the warmth. She had a feeling the girl was in trouble so she gave her a key and invited her to let herself in if she is ever in danger. She understands that to keep Mia safe they mustmove quickly, so she packs up the car and takes her somewhere he won’t know, because nobody knows. She has a long-term partner, a woman she doesn’t live with but trusts implicitly. She knows that with them, Mia should be able to thrive without the community breathing down her neck, to go to school and read to her heart’s content and have the life she has dreamed up for herself.
She also sensed that Joel was a man who wouldn’t give up Mia without a fight.
Of course it wouldn’t be an Alice Hoffman without something magical happening and here Mia experiences a time slip and finds herself in the same time and place as her hero Nathaniel Hawthorne. He hasn’t yet written The Scarlet Letter, in fact he’s on the verge of giving up writing altogether. When he meets Mia their connection is instant despite the centuries between them. They start a love affair, but what will the consequences of that be? Anything they do will change the future. Could her presence in his world mean that the very book that brought her here, no longer exists? In fact the consequences of their love could be even more life changing for both of them. Can she stay in his world? Is there any way he could come into hers? Mia is becoming aware that Nathaniel may have to sacrifice his writing for them to be together and she’s not sure she can let him do that. All the while, her father Joel is still watching and waiting.
I loved the play on The Scarlet Letter here because it shows us how powerless women have been across the centuries. I loved how Alice Hoffman creates this magical setting. The landscape, particular the woods and river, feel like something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It would be easy to dismiss her work as whimsical and romantic, but underneath is a fierce feminist manifesto and an equally fierce defence of the written word. I was aware as I read the novel that it could go the same way as other books that have supported women’s reproductive rights and end up banned. The way the religious community prevent women from controlling their own fertility is a representation of what’s happening in some states of America. Abortion has always been a controversial topic in the US and the rights of women in some areas have reverted back to the early 20th Century. Jodi Picoult often cites Alice Hoffman as her favourite writer and a huge influence on her own work. In some states of America Jodi Picoult’s work is banned from libraries and schools because it concerns issues like abortion, teenage pregnancy, fertility treatment and same sex marriage. Here Hoffman is hugely critical of a community that doesn’t value women’s education, burns books and leaves them with no rights over their own bodies. There’s a part of her magical landscape where desperate women have taken matters into their own hands. They’ve taken herbs or potions to end their pregnancies and have created a burial place for the children they’ve lost and those they can’t bear to have.
Mia’s surrogate parents are the antithesis of Joel’s community. They are intelligent and progressive women who actively encourage questioning and reading. They remind Mia that no matter how moral and righteous a community might seem, if it restricts education, burns books and controls women, believing them to be inferior to men, then it is on the way to being fascistic. It’s so sad that Joel won’t let women read but then uses letters to punish them and control their behaviour, by literally branding them into the skin in a ceremony. Instead of wearing a scarlet letter, an adulteress would be branded on the upper arm with a letter ‘A’. Words and books are the source of our knowledge and that scares men like Joel. This is a brave book and will probably be underestimated, but women have been speaking their truth in ways that fly under the radar for centuries; films or books dismissed as ‘chick lit’ or ‘rom coms’; jingly, bright pop music with dark or subversive lyrics; pretty pink fashion branding the wearer as stupid, like Elle in Legally Blonde. I think there are people who will see the beautiful landscape, the time travel and magical feeling of this nook and underestimate it. I’m hoping readers look for the deeper themes here and see what Alice Hoffman was doing when choosing to use The Scarlet Letter. It’s a much beloved classic that she clearly loves, but it’s also a perfect basis for a story about these women. The ending is perfect for the autumn in that it’s bittersweet. We love the beautiful fall colours, particularly in the part of the USA where the book’s set. Those brightly coloured leaves bring us joy, but they’re also signalling an ending. The beauty of loss. 🍂
Published on 17th August by Scribner
Meet the Author
Alice Hoffman is the author of thirty works of fiction, including Practical Magic, The Dovekeepers, Magic Lessons, and, most recently, The Book of Magic. She lives in Boston. Her new novel, The Invisible Hour, is forthcoming in August 2023. Visit her website: http://www.alicehoffman.com
Autumn, 1940. As the Blitz rages in London, Lord Ashburn (known as Lord Jones) is conducting some family business in the capital. As he walks the streets of Knightsbridge he finds himself confronted with an amazing and incongruous sight; a zebra and her foal are sharing the sights and sounds of the city. They have have escaped from London Zoo after their enclosure is damaged. A strange but unforgettable connection is formed between Lord Jones and the animal, who begins to follow him. The instant connection sparks a rebellion in him and he can’t leave her, so decides to do the unthinkable instead. He takes the zebra and her foal, Sweetie, back to his family’s estate in Pembrokeshire.
These beautiful and exotic animals arrive at Cresswell Manor in rural Wales and immediately start working their magic. Slowly, they start to transform the lives of those who live on the estate. Lord Jones seems inspired and has a thriving sense of purpose for the first time in his life. He finds the courage to put some distance between himself and the family that have always treated him with coldness and disdain. Strangely he finds himself forming a friendship with Anwen Llewelyn, the feisty and independent housekeeper at Cresswell, while all the time these wise creatures look on…
I love books that are hard to pigeonhole into one category and this is a mix of personal growth, historical fiction, romance, and a sprinkle of magic realism. Anna Vaught seems to choose these fascinating and unusual events in history to explore a familiar trope from a unique perspective. Half of the appeal is in the beautiful way she writes, something that grabbed me with her novel Saving Lucia. The Zebra and Lord Jones is a simple boy-meets-girl, but made magical by the dangerous backdrop of bombs falling from the sky and one man’s destiny with two zebras. The zebra’s escape from London Zoo is part of historical record, but with her unique style and talent Anna uses this one event to explore so many aspects of life. She weaves these strands together, slowly creating a tapestry of love and loss, threaded with some much needed hope.
I had so much empathy for Lord Jones, who contracted polio as a child and has always had a limp. His aristocratic family have looked down on him all his life, withholding love and physical affection. In this historical period, the aristocracy in this country really were dreadful. Many were instrumental in the plan to appease Hitler prior to WW2 and Lord Jones’s father was friends with Mosley and his wife Diana Mitford, even attending their wedding at Joseph Goebbel’s home in Germany. The way they’ve treated their son has left him depressed and with low self-esteem. Despite being tremendously privileged materially he is emotionally malnourished and desperately in need of a focus, preferably something he can become good at and build his confidence. It is perfect timing for these beautiful creatures to appear in his life and his plan to take them back to Wales with him is his first confident and decisive step into a new way of living. A more hopeful one.
Hope is a precious commodity at this point in the war and it isn’t just London where people are in need of a magical uplift. Anna has woven some of these characters into her story, such as Ernest the evacuee, Talbot the dedicated zookeeper and his counterparts in Germany. All of them are just trying to live their ordinary day to day lives in extraordinary times. There’s even an unexpected cameo from the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haille Selassie. Most interesting of all to me is Anwen, who has a keen sense of justice and a fierceness that I admired immediately. The characters are the stars of this particular show and they are a joy, including Lord Jones and his slow transformation into a different man. At the centre, drawing all of these people together, are the beautiful zebras Mother and Sweetie, who feel like characters in their own right.
I love magic realism, it’s one of those genres that make me a little bit giddy when I’m reading. It’s possibly the closest thing an adult reader can have to the stories we encounter as children that fill us with wonder. It has a different effect to all out fantasy because it creates what I call ‘literary glimmers’ – those shimmery moments of wonder amidst the drudgery and routine of the everyday. The contrast between the magic and the ordinary, elevates the themes and emotions of the story. The narrator is also playing with the reader, they walk us through the story showing us what happens like a puppeteer, deciding what to show us and when to draw the curtain. They display a giddiness and excitement at what’s happening, as they place in front of us a new snippet of gossip or historical document. It’s as if they’re discovering it at the same time we are, so we’re inspired by their immediacy and excitement. It’s as if they run up to us, waving a letter and saying ‘wait till you hear this!’
I felt inspired by this childlike curiosity and I found myself actually smiling on the outside at the playful details, ghosts, owls and zebras communicating with humans. I felt comforted, provoked, happy and full of hope about life, which is a gift in itself. The backdrop is hard hitting. I’ve always remembered the Stephen Poliakoff piece Glorious 39 because it depicted people in London queueing up to have their animals put to sleep and our main character Anne feeling unable to part with their cat. I’d never seen this depicted in a war drama before or after, so to see it as part of the narrative here made it real for me. I couldn’t imagine letting go of my animals even for the war effort and it made me think about the all domestic sacrifices being made for the public good. This historical detail, as well as the changes being made at the zoo, were so important to include, but absolutely heartbreaking to read. This is the hard part of surrendering to her mix of reality and fairy tales, but it was beautifully offset with the humour around Operation Zebra too. In all this is a wonderful tale, told by a unique and playful writer at her most skilful.
Thanks to Renard Press for inviting me to join the tour. The book is out on 27/9/23. You can buy The Zebra and Lord Jones
Anna’s next publication is her new novel, Saving Lucia, about the Honourable Violet Gibson who tried to kill Mussolini; this will be published by Bluemoose Books in April, 2020. Anna also publishes her first short story collection in September 2020; this is Famished and published by Influx Press. At the time of writing, Anna has three further books in the area, various short fiction coming and is writing a new book. She is an English teacher, tutor and mentor to young people, volunteer with young people, editor, short fiction writer, creative writing tutor and copywriter. She currently lives in Wiltshire, with her husband and three boys.
Ever since the final page of Miss Aldridge Regrets I’d wondered what would happen next to Lena, who had managed to escape the clutches of a murderer, find her birth mother and become the lover of band leader Will all on board ship. She was sailing to New York to audition for a new musical on Broadway, but became embroiled in the life of a rich NYC family after being placed with them for dinner. Now in New York, what would become of her relationships – both with her mother and with Will? Would she be able to find work after finding out the Broadway job was a ruse to get her on the voyage? I was shocked when the novel began with a woman, sprawled on the sidewalk after failing from a high rise window. As the police arrived and start to look at the body they notice she’s clutching something in her hand. It’s a passport in the name of Lena Aldridge. The author then takes us back to Lena’s arrival in NYC nine days earlier, when Will had taken her to stay with friends of his until the return voyage. What could possibly have gone so wrong?
Lena has found herself dragged into Will’s world, perhaps a little sooner than would be expected in a conventional relationship. As Will takes leave she wonders if this will give them time to test their relationship out and whether they could have a future. His friends Claudette and Louis are a lovely couple who live in a good neighbourhood in Harlem. Claudette is a librarian and she settles Lena into their spare bedroom, telling her about how long they have known Will and that they’re looking forward to getting to know her. Will’s only family is his sister Belle and niece Joey, who he stays with when the ship’s on a fortnight turnaround. The five are pretty close knit, apart from the obvious tension between Will and his sister, despite which he absolutely adores his niece. Even though she’s wary, Lena and Belle get along enough to go out shopping and have cocktails in a fancy bar. I started to feel this creeping sensation that Lena was on the outside of something. The three friends have secrets and so does Belle, is it because Lena is new to the group and maybe not quite trusted yet? Is there something about her being British that makes them think she won’t get it? She is surprised to find out That despite their animosity, Will does go to any lengths to protect his sister. Lena is patient though, she has concerns about her own situation and doesn’t want to delve too far into their secrets, without knowing what’s going to happen between her and Will. It’s too early to say love or talk about permanence. She doesn’t even know if she could find herself living in Harlem. Lena’s also looking for people who knew her father to learn about his early life and if there’s family that Lena’s never met. There are also financial and emotional issues in her relationship with her mother that must be resolved. It’s a huge crossroads to negotiate and the tension builds as we start rooting for her future and worrying she’s plummeted to her death.
I love this combination of historical crime mystery, especially those set in such a stylish city and time period. I think in a lot of ways this was a more successful novel than the first and I definitely felt the time period in the social life of Harlem and the contrasting Sunday church going. The glamour of New York was set beautifully against those less fortunate and I was interested in the way colour had some bearing on this; Lena and Belle can ‘pass’ as white enough to get into a fancy bar, but the much darker skinned Will would have struggled. I enjoyed these deeper looks into racial divisions, class and privilege, as well as how they differed in the earlier timeline. Lena being bi-racial didn’t seem to have the same complexity in London as it did in New York, but she is reminded a few times that it would be worse in the south. There are references to lynchings, the prejudice around mixed race relationships (both for Alfie and his daughter) and the exploitation of black women by wealthy white men. In this earlier timeline I enjoyed this exploration of young black women’s lives as well as the contrast with the relative freedom Lena and Belle are enjoying. Have things changed or is it their lighter skin?
I thought the historical element really came to life and I enjoyed these sections that went back even further to 1908, when her father Alfie suddenly fled New York for London. As both of these storylines started to reveal their secrets, the novel became intense and gripping. I had suspicions around both Claudette and her husband, because although they were there for Lena in a practical sense they didn’t give much of themselves emotionally. There were also certain morals to their way of life, such as Will not staying with Lena at their flat. I wasn’t sure that they actually liked her, but wanted to do a favour for Will. The central mystery really held my attention and remained tense even with the flashbacks in-between. The more building blocks we had to construct Lena’s, the more I felt I knew her and the hope she’d have a happy ending grew for me. I would suggest reading the first novel before this one as there are links and recurring characters throughout. There was an open ended feel to the final chapter so who knows we may be able to spend time with Lena again. I’d be more than happy to join her.
Meet The Author
Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common. This Lovely City was featured on the inaugural BBC TWO TV book club show, Between the Covers, and has received multiple accolades, securing Louise’s place as an author to watch.
I’ve had this fascination with Henry’s wives and the whole Tudor dynasty since primary school, as I wrote about earlier in the week. It was my introduction to Philippa Gregory when I was in my twenties that really started the ball rolling. I started to learn about the women’s perspective behind these historical facts we all learn. I’d never known that Henry VIII had an affair with Anne Boleyn’s younger sister Mary or that it’s possible she had the King’s children just like Bessie Blount. I learned more about the political and religious machinations that hide behind the six marriages and their tragic ends. I hadn’t known about the uneasiness within Henry’s aristocratic courtiers and advisors about the commoners he was bringing in to advise him, such as Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. There were aspects of the Queen’s roles in events that opened up to me, such as their religious allegiances and how the marriages cemented Henry’s beliefs at the time and signalled his intentions to the rest of the world. I’d never known about how ladies in waiting were chosen or trained, often shipped to grand houses with aristocratic women overseeing their education. I’d also become fascinated about women on the periphery like Jane Rochford, who’d been married to Thomas Boleyn and had to give evidence against her own husband, then years later oversee the young Queen Katherine Howard only to be drawn into treachery yet again. I’d become interested in Bess of Hardwick after buying a book about her at Chatsworth House then going to an exhibition about her, including the household accounts written in her own hand. I knew that Chatsworth had been one of the houses where Mary, Queen of Scots was held, but not what her captivity did to her marriage and her reputation with Elizabeth I. There is such a rich seam of Tudor fiction in these areas, but I’m going to recommend some of my favourites that you will probably know, then some you might not as well as those still sitting on my TBR.
Great for Beginners
This is a great beginning because it’s outside the Queen’s series and deals with characters outside the actual court. Set in 1568, Elizabeth I has been on the throne for ten years, but hasn’t married and won’t choose a successor. Mary Queen of Scots has been forced to flee her own lands, due to rebellions and rash actions in her choice of husband. Her enemies have used her weaknesses and their perceptions of women to unseat her, leaving her on the mercy of her cousin, Elizabeth I. However, Mary is Catholic and advisors to the Queen don’t want to risk their already weak position against Catholic France and Spain. They also worry about her infant son James, another threat to the throne. Elizabeth’s advisor and spy master William Cecil comes up with a plan, Mary will be kept under house arrest, living with all the luxury a Queen should expect but unable to leave. He has to find a suitable couple to house Mary and decides upon Bess of Hardwick and her new husband George Talbot, who reside at Chatsworth House. Mary does not accept her house arrest though, bringing George Talbot under her spell and plotting to regain her throne in Scotland. Bess sees her husband’s deference to the young Queen and knows that if they are linked to her plotting, William Cecil will make sure they face the Tower or even the block. This is an interesting angle on Mary as we see her through the eyes of another woman, a very shrewd and intelligent woman who has managed to amass her own fortune along with estates and land left to her by her previous husband. I felt pulled into Mary’s story and despite feeling very sympathetic towards her I also felt angry on Bess’s behalf. Neither woman wanted to be in this position and I felt that frustration.
Set in 1539. It’s time for Henry to find a fourth wife after the tragic death of Jane Seymour. He has the heir and now he needs to have a spare. Since he is head of the church in England, it seems wise to take a Protestant Queen and Anne of Cleves fits the bill. Chosen from the painted likeness on the book’s cover and organised by Thomas Cromwell. The marriage falters immediately, when Henry dresses as a commoner to surprise his newly arrived wife to be she doesn’t even recognise him. Aggrieved, Henry tells Cromwell he finds her undesirable because she has too much flesh and smells unpleasant. His advisors are asked to pay court to the teenage Katherine Howard while a divorce agreement is reached. Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law Jane Rochford returns to court and becomes close to the new Queen, desperately trying to cope with a young naïve and rather silly girl on one hand and the tyrannical Henry on the other. When Katherine starts to play dangerous games with Henry’s servant Thomas Culpepper, will Jane be able to avoid the block a second time? I love this period of the wives’s story because I think Anne of Cleves is the shrewdest of his wives, accepting his terms to live alone like his sister immediately and setting up home in palaces vacated by Wolsey and the Boleyn family. In fact the King got along very well with Anne and often joined her for dinner or to play chess in the evening. By contrast Katherine Howard’s tale is tragic and her eventual death is desperately sad as her courage fails her and she begs for her life.
Wider Reading
I have so much sympathy for this poor girl who is caught in a power play between political and religious factions. Jane Grey was the great niece of Henry VIII, a descendent of his closest friend Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Princess Mary – Brandon didn’t seek permission to marry Henry’s sister and their friendship faltered. Jane was actually the cousin of Edward IV, Mary I and Elizabeth I. At only 16 years old she is forced to marry into a powerful family – the Dudleys – as part of a plan to usurp the throne. When Edward IV dies, they decide to install Jane and her husband Guildford Dudley on the throne before Edward’s sister Mary can travel to London. The book is fascinating even if you do know the story of this nine day Queen and adds that human element behind the facts. Weir presents Jane as manipulated and physically abused by the powerful men who were desperate for her to take power on their behalf. There was the religious concern about having a Catholic queen on the throne and her allegiances with Spain. Would Mary return England to the Catholic faith? Might she seek a Catholic marriage with one of her European allies? Jane was a devout Protestant to the end, in fact it sustained and strengthened her when held in the Tower of London. I felt her dread towards the end and I felt so sad for her because she had so little control or peace in her short life.
The woman who outlived Henry VIII still had a tragic end. Her true love was Thomas Seymour and she expected after her first husband had died that she would have a husband of her choosing. Unfortunately Henry got there first with a surprise proposal and no one is allowed to refuse the King. Clever and sensible, she is known for being able to appease an increasingly cantankerous Henry. However, there is so much more to Katherine Parr than being a nursemaid to elderly husband. She published a religious text and proved a great stepmother to all of Henry’s children who joined them at court. It seemed as if love and motherhood had passed this woman by. After Henry’s death Thomas Seymour does jump in, determined not to miss the moment but with almost unseemly haste. Katherine thinks that finally she can have a husband of her choosing and love is on the cards. However, does Thomas have other plans? Could it be that Katherine’s house guest, the very young and spirited Elizabeth, is the reason he’s so keen on a quick marriage? As they marry and live together, Katherine soon becomes pregnant but her age and health are against her. With a wife on bed rest, Thomas has plenty of time on his hands and too little to do. Will Katherine know the happy family she always wanted? This book sticks closely to historical fact and is a fascinating read about one woman’s hopes and dreams dashed by duty.
The Tudors in Context
Hilary Mantel’s incredible Tudor trilogy starts with this introduction to Thomas Cromwell, set in the 1520’s when he was clerk to Cardinal Wolsey. His rise from lowly blacksmith’s son is a fascinating one and his eventual succession to Wolsey’s role as chief advisor to Henry VIII was not liked by aristocratic courtiers. Usually appointments like this were filled by dukes or earls, often from very specific families who traditionally held senior roles at court such as the Seymours. Wolsey is removed from office for failing to secure an answer to the King’s ‘Great Matter’, his divorce from Katherine of Aragon based on a biblical verse that states if a man should marry his late brother’s wife they will be childless. Henry did receive a special dispensation to marry Katherine when she was his heart’s desire, but several miscarriages later and only one daughter to succeed him, Henry is desperate for a male heir. Thomas is ambitious. He’s also a bully, with the ability to charm and manipulate to get the result he wants. He handles the King’s vacillations between romantic desire and murderous rage. He is pursuing Anne Boleyn who is not succumbing to his offer to be his exclusive mistress. She’s seen many women discarded by Henry, including her own sister and she’s playing a different game. Thomas is keen to install Anne as Henry’s wife because she shares his Protestant leanings and has a reformer’s agenda. Can Thomas secure Henry’s divorce and set in motion the English reformation? This is a different viewpoint on Henry and the turbulent moods that are starting to control both him and the court.
Elizabeth is a fascinating woman who grows up in the most tumultuous period in royal history: the Wars of the Roses or the Cousin’s War as it’s also known. She was the daughter of Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville, sister of the two lost princes in the tower, courted by her own uncle Richard III, but eventual wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII. As Henry VII takes the throne from Richard III in battle, Elizabeth and her family are in a very precarious position. Her father’s death left the family fleeing to sanctuary as allegiances changed all around them. There are rumours she has been the mistress of Richard III. There is still no sign of her two younger brothers, Edward IV’s rightful heirs who were placed in the tower by her uncle and thought to be dead. As the Lancaster side take the throne she expects to live in sanctuary again, but her mother Elizabeth Woodville is a survivor and is in correspondence with the new King’s mother, the formidable Margaret Beaufort. She knows that her son’s reign is controversial and he needs to create a more peaceful England in order to secure the throne for his successors. Lancaster and York need to unite and Elizabeth is the last York princess. Their marriage is a symbol of peace an to represent that the white rose and the red rose are combined to create the symbolic Tudor rose, visible in many Royal palaces and historic buildings. Elizabeth presents a united front to the country, but their union was difficult. Henry was a paranoid man who dreaded Elizabeth’s brothers being found and was often suspicious of her mother too. This novel takes us into that marriage and sets the scene for Henry VIII’s unexpected reign, after the death of his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales. See also Philippa Gregory’s novel The White Princess.
My Tudor TBR
This is the third and final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell and takes us into his final years as Henry’s advisor. The book starts in 1536 when Anne Boleyn is decapitated with a french sword when Cromwell’s fortunes may be at their peak. Henry is settled with Jane Seymour who is expecting a baby. Calm reigns at court. Behind the scenes, Cromwell still has much to think about: rebellion, traitors and spies both at home and abroad. Can the nation shake off it’s Catholic past and move on? Or do the dead continually return to haunt us? The execution of Thomas More is playing on Henry’s mind particularly at this time. For Cromwell, the Spanish ambassador whispered something in his ear. A though that will not go away. Henry will turn on him too. As he always does in the end. With no family, title or private army behind him, Thomas has no one to defend him. It’s a lonely place to be, reliant solely on your own cunning to survive. This thought comes to life as the Queen dies and the lives of predator and prey move to their inevitable end. I know what happened to Thomas Cromwell, in fact I had to close my eyes when watching The Tudors and seeing his fate. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to read this book though, because Mantel’s research is extensive and she has an almost spooky ability to get inside a character’s mind and portray what those dry historical facts felt like. I must admit to being a little daunted by the size of this, so I think I’m going to separate it into readable sections and make it a daily reading goal.
I have this on the pile of books by the bedside, mainly paperbacks I’ve picked up from charity shops and second hand bookshops. It seems to provide or imagine a back story for Henry’s fifth wife that makes her plight even more tragic. Katherine is only twelve when she is sent to the home of the Duchess of Norfolk, a place where girls from aristocratic families go to train as ladies in waiting. As a member of the Boleyn family, this is a normal placement but she must have been aware of the terrible end her cousin met at Henry’s hands. Cat Tilney, another girl living in the house, is suspicious of Katherine. She thinks she’s only interested in clothes and boys, but is eventually drawn in by the young girl and they become close confidantes. When Katherine is called to court and drawn into the King’s orbit, Cat becomes her lady-in-waiting. Henry has set aside Anne of Cleves and despite Katherine only being 17 his advisors present the young girl as a possible successor. Henry is charmed by this charming young girl and at first married life is enjoyable on his side. However, Katherine is married to a much older man who is now in ill health and has a permanent leg ulcer that smells terrible. A rumours start to filter through the ladies-in-waiting that Henry can’t perform in the marital bed, whispers start to reach courtier’s ears about Katherine’s conduct. Girls that came from the Duchess of Norfolk’s home may have been entertaining much older men. In fact her present conduct is worse, because she’s already having an affair with King’s manservant Thomas Culpepper. Katherine is terrified and implicates others, including her childhood sweetheart Francis. Unknown to her though, Francis is now in a serious relationship with Cat Tilney. With Francis in the tower, Cat could save him, but but only by implicating the Queen and ensuring her death. I’m fascinated in reading this take on Katherine’s early life, which seems to show how vulnerable young women were at court and how they were always blamed for men’s actions.
I hope this gives you some ideas about where to start with historical fiction about The Tudors. It isn’t an exhaustive list and there’s plenty of non-fiction from various historical that’s equally fascinating, not to mention the debate on how male and female historicans often interpret material very differently and with potential bias. I do think Henry is more understandable when put in the context of his father’s reign. Henry wasn’t meant to be King and was allowed to spend time carousing with friends like Charles Brandon rather than learning about the constitutional obligations of the crown. Henry was an intelligent young man in terms of history, philosophy and religion, but wasn’t schooled in duty and service in the same way as his brother Arthur. He was also left at court with women: his mother, both grandmothers and his sisters were said to have spoiled him. His relationship with his father was complex considering he was the spare, but he was at court to see his father’s paranoia, his alleged affairs and his vacillating over whether Henry could marry Katherine of Aragon.
I’m interested in research that looks at the Tudor’s medical history. Henry’s jousting accident during his relationship with Anne Boleyn was a bad one, with Henry knocked out for some time afterwards. It is very possible he sustained a head injury at that time, not to mention the leg injury which became ulcerated and impossible to heal. The pain and restrictions of this ulcer certainly contributed to his obesity and terrible mood swings in later years. It is likely he was also impotent after his marriage to Jane Seymour, providing more insight into his comments on Anne of Cleves’s desirability; there was nothing wrong with him, she was too unattractive. I have also read about possible chromosomal abnormalities that might explain why both his first wives were unable to produce a male heir, with all male babies being miscarried or dying within a few days or weeks of their birth. Edward IV was a sickly child and died very young too, while his sisters Mary and Elizabeth lived into adulthood. All of this adds to our understanding of the Tudor’s reigns, but can’t fully excuse a man who was cruel and tyrannical. It does however give us insight into the experiences of the Tudor Queens and their daughters, most of whom met tragic ends either wholly or in part caused by men.
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