Tales of Two Wives

Taking a break from medieval/Tudor times, I read—or, in the case of one book, started to read—two novels about two famous wives: Juliet Waldron’s Mozart’s Wife and Diane Haeger’s The Secret Wife of King George IV. (Isn’t it nice when the titles save the trouble of an explanation?)

The good news first: I found Mozart’s Wife, published in 2004, to be absorbing and well-written. It follows Konstanze’s life as she grows from a naive young girl to a capable, shrewd woman, her marriage as it disintegrates under the pressures of too many bills, infant mortality, and infidelity.

Konstanze is the narrator here, and her voice is a refreshing one: informal, earthy without becoming coarse, candid, un-self-pitying, and wry. She and Mozart are highly flawed but likable people, who never forfeit our sympathies even as they act appallingly toward each other and toward others. That’s very difficult for an author to pull off, and Waldron does it admirably.

Waldron has a nice eye for detail. As a mistress of Mozart’s departs the cramped household, she is accompanied by her cats: “Her calico Mutzie and tiger Murr followed, tails up, for all the world like a couple of well-behaved dogs out for a walk.”

The book does feel a little disjointed in spots. For instance, Konstanze spends much of Chapter 20 fussing over an impending visit from Leopold, Mozart’s difficult father, but the visit is never depicted; when we next hear of Leopold two chapters later, the matter seems to have been forgotten. Did something get cut? I also felt that too little emphasis was placed on Mozart’s Masonic ties, considering the crucial role they later assumed in Waldron’s explanation of his death and obscure burial.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. Waldron also has one of the nicer websites I've seen for a historical novelist; check it out here.

I can’t say I derived the same enjoyment from The Secret Wife of King George IV, Diane Haeger’s 2001 novel about Maria Fitzherbert. In fact, I didn’t finish it; the novel is 373 pages long, and I managed to read only to page 105.

What stopped me? For one thing, the action in these pages revolves around Maria, who as depicted by Haeger is simply not very interesting. We learn that she has “ivory shoulders,” “pale gold hair,” and eyes as “deep as melting chocolate,” and that this combination has the effect of making men fall instantly in love with her, but we learn almost nothing about what lies behind Maria’s beautiful exterior. We’re told that she wants to marry for love, having been married twice for advantage, and that her Catholic beliefs keep her from agreeing to become George’s mistress, but other than that, it’s 105 pages of ivory shoulders, gold hair, deep brown eyes, and lots of costume changes. This is fine if one’s flipping through Vogue magazine, but when one’s reading a historical novel, it’s tedious.

To make matters worse, this part of the novel is taken up with Maria and George’s budding romance, and though we’re told that all sorts of sparks are flying between the couple, they never ignite for the reader. The couple meet, George makes an advance, Maria refuses it. Gossip ensues. The couple meet again. George makes another advance. Maria refuses it. More gossip ensues. And so forth. The dialogue between the couple is of the “unhand me, sir” variety: “'I cannot hear this! Please, Your Highness, do not continue!'” The prose sometimes approaches the ludicrous: “He was dangerous, wild, and totally forbidden. He was also masculine and wholly male.”

No girlie men here.

Frustratingly, there are signs that Haeger could have done a lot better. In a couple of scenes where George was talking to his father or to his old nurse or to a female friend, he became a genuinely interesting character, generous yet riddled with insecurities and anger, about whom I wanted to know more. Unfortunately, in a matter of pages, he was back to yammering, “'I want you. . . . I want all of you,'” to Maria. Perhaps things might have improved once he and Maria married (at least, surely, in the dialogue department), but with a pile of other books screaming for my attention, it just didn’t seem worth the effort to find out.

The Secret Wife of George IV did encourage me, at least, to have the library send over Jean Plaidy’s take on the same marriage: The Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill. With that and Margaret George’s Helen of Troy on the way, I should be able to keep myself out of trouble for a while.

Whole Lot of Tweaking Going On

I've been fooling around with my website, trying to give it a more "historical fiction" feel than it had before and to make it easier on the eyes. Please take a look--I'd love to hear what you think!

Beach Reading: Margaret George and Mary, Queen of Scots

There’s nothing like the beach to get some reading done. Find a book that one doesn’t mind getting a little sandy, slather the kids in sunscreen, slather oneself in sunscreen, drag a chair out to the sand, send the kids out into the ocean, glance up every half hour or so to make sure no one’s being carried out to sea, go for a dip when it really gets hot, and just watch the pages fly by.

Occupied thusly this weekend, I managed to finish not only two short books I was reading for review purposes, but Margaret George’s 1992 historical novel, Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles.

This is a very long book—it takes Mary literally from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless, it reads quickly and holds the reader’s attention; I seldom found myself skimming.

Most of the novel is told by a third-person narrator, although there are some long stretches of journal-writing by Mary in the last fifth or so. Though Mary’s viewpoint is the predominant one, the narrator occasionally travels to Elizabeth I’s court and into the minds of various other characters as well, including Darnley, Bothwell, and sundry ill-fated spies.

Certainly the outstanding quality of this historical novel is George’s ability to draw characters. Mary herself is depicted sympathetically without ever being idealized; at crucial times in her life, there’s almost always someone to tell her that she's making a mistake, and she listens to them far too seldom. More important, George avoids making caricatures of figures such as Darnley and John Knox. The latter is especially well rounded; harsh as he is on the pulpit, we also see glimpses of him as a loving husband and father.

George has a nice eye for small detail, as when Mary on the last evening of her life prays, only to be distracted by her dog thumping his tail. “It was that everyday sound, the summation of all the everyday things she was leaving, that brought tears to her eyes.”

I did have some reservations here and there. One of the few parts of the novel I found myself skimming was that detailing the love affair between Mary and Bothwell, where the dialogue takes on a decidedly hackneyed tone. When Bothwell uttered the line, “'Put your arms around me, and whatever happens, do not let go,'” I found myself anticipating the couple’s impending separation not at all with regret. Earlier, a three-way sex scene between Darnley, Riccio, and a prostitute struck me as gratuitous, since it had no influence on later events and didn’t enlighten us about the characters of those involved, except to show that Riccio could rise to an occasion, so to speak. But these are minor quibbles and didn’t spoil what I thought was an excellent read.

It’s interesting, by the way, to compare this novel to Reay Tannahill’s Fatal Majesty. The novels take entirely different views of such issues as the authenticity of the Casket Letters and of the circumstances behind the marriage of Mary and Bothwell, yet as I was reading each novel, I was convinced by the case each author made, even while being aware of the possibility of a different interpretation.

So if you’ve waited 14 years to read this novel, like I did, go ahead and read it—don’t make it 15 years.

What to read next? All sorts of things await, thanks to the benevolence of eBay, Amazon, PaperbackSwap, and the U.S. mail, not to mention the library sale the other day.

This 'n' That

A couple of pre-Labor Day thoughts:

Check out Pauline Montagna's The Romance of History, an ezine discussing historical romance and historical fiction. There's an essay by Pauline about Regency romances, an article by Francis A. Miniter about James Clavell's Shogun, and a couple of reviews by yours truly.

I've got myself a Myspace site up now, having browsed over there a few times to see what the fuss was all about. Myspace is quite entertaining, though heavy on the ads, and it's fun seeing who shows up there. (Shakespeare, Richard III, and Henry VIII's wives all have profiles there. So far, only Shakespeare has visited my page, but I've hopes that the rest of the gang will follow.)

Different Strokes for Different Folks, and How Many Folks Would You Like?

Today a fellow by the deceptively friendly name of "Bob" left me a one-star review on my Amazon page. In a nutshell, Bob thought there were too many characters, too many facts, not enough action, and not enough descriptions of medieval castles and homes.

Bob, bless his heart, is entitled to his opinion, and I only wish he'd posted it before I went shopping today so I could have consoled myself with an extra pair of jeans. As it is, it's given me a chance to indulge in some Teddy Grahams (cinnamon graham cookies shaped like teddy bears, for you folks across the pond) without guilt.

My Southern graciousness toward Bob did wear a little thin here, though:

Whether the homosexuality of Edward II is a fact or a figment of the author's imagination I don't know. Nor whether its use here is more than an attempt to meet to what some consider the "correct" tone of the present times.

Which makes me wonder: Will some author next come up with... "Washington & Lafayete, A Story of Forbidden Love?"

Cute, very cute. But Bob, a few short minutes of Googling might have cleared up this difficulty for you. Edward II's homosexuality isn't a fact--no one knows whether he had sexual relations with his male favorites or not--but it's very far from being a figment of my lurid, politically correct imagination. Suggestions that Edward II was involved in sexual relations with men date back to the fourteenth century, well before my time, thank you very much, and I'm merely following in a long line of writers, both historians and novelists, who have depicted his relationships as homosexual. (The only respect in which I differ from other novelists, as far as I know, is that I depict him as having heterosexual relationships outside of marriage as well--a depiction that is borne out historically by his acknowledged out-of-wedlock son, Adam, and near-contemporary rumors that he had been having an affair with his niece.)

Just to set the record straight, so to speak.

Anyway, speaking of long novels with a lot of characters, I'm reading Margaret George's Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles and am enjoying it thoroughly. For my own part, when a historical novel takes place over a long period of time and involves complex events, I'd rather have it be a long novel with many characters than a short one with just a few characters. Sharon Penman's The Sunne in Splendour (1459 to 1492; long) and Juliet Dymoke's The Sun in Splendor (from around 1464 to 1489; short), for instance, both cover the Wars of the Roses and Richard III's fall and include some of the same events. They take very different approaches, with Penman telling the story through the viewpoint of many characters and Dymoke telling it through one, that of a woman who knows most of the major players but who is often at the periphery of events. I find Penman's approach more satisfying, and Dymoke's novel, though readable and agreeable, strikes me as skimpy by comparison. It's a matter of taste, I guess--what's yours?

I Am Woman, Hear Me Rant

I really was going to do some work on my novel in progress last night. Honestly. Then I saw this article in The New York Times, and my rant switch came on. (If you can't get to it--the article, that is, not my rant switch--try using Bugmenot.com.) The gist of it is that thanks to Ellen Archer and Pamela G. Dorman, publisher Hyperion is starting a new imprint called Voice. According to the Times's Motoko Rich, "Voice is specifically focusing on women from their mid-30’s and older and will have a resolutely anti-chick-lit bent." Rich adds that 10 professional women will meet twice a year "[t]o help Voice pinpoint what women want."

Well, I'm sure some highly paid consultant has told the women who came up with this idea otherwise, but judging from how much of it is in bookstores, what quite a few women want is chick lit. My own tastes don't run toward it, but I don't see it as something that women need to be saved from reading, any more than we need to be saved from reading romance novels or historical fiction or any other type of genre fiction. The fact that the saviors riding to our rescue are other women doesn't make me one iota more grateful for their intervention. It seems I ought to be grateful, though, because Dorman is quoted as saying, “'People are overwhelmed by choice, and what they want is someone who is self-selecting for them.'”

So what have the folks at Hyperion self-selected for all of us women over 35 to read instead of all that chick lit being written, edited, published, and read by so many misguided women? First on the platter is The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. "Ms. Bennetts argues that women who 'opt out' of careers to raise children forfeit the financial, intellectual, emotional and even medical benefits of working outside the home."

Well, I'm going to save Hyperion a little market research now. I'm over 35. I'm a woman. But I'm not going to be buying The Feminine Mistake, because frankly, I think the last thing the publishing world needs is another book by a woman telling other women that there's something wrong with them because they choose to live lives that are not exactly like hers.

Now, what am I going to do with the money I save by not buying Bennetts' book? After resting up a while (that choice is just so overwhelming), I'm going to go to the bookstore and look for a book that has a great big shoe on it. Or a great big purse. Or a great big shoe and a great big purse. And I'm going to buy it. Then for good measure, I'm going to find a book with a hunky, barechested guy wearing a kilt on its cover. The boldest, most plaid, most manly kilt there is. And I'm going to buy it. Because I don't like being told by women how to spend my hard-earned book money any more than I like being told by men how to spend it.

As the chick lit ladies know, shopping can be such fun.

Boswell Makes the Rounds

Remember Boswell's interview a while back? Now he's made it onto GalleyCat, along with a number of other pooches, including one called Bothwell and one with a distinct taste for Caleb Carr.

Aside from having his doubts about GalleyCat's feline-centric name, Boswell's delighted to be there.

A Fun Author Photo

At a library sale yesterday, I picked up a whole heap of old historical novels, many of them from the 1950's and 1960's. One of them was The Last Love, a 1963 novel by Thomas Costain about Napoleon's exile. I hadn't heard of it before, but I've read Costain's The Three Edwards, and this looked interesting, so I grabbed it. Only when I was admiring my stack of books later in the evening did I see what a gem I'd found, because of this picture of the author on the dust jacket:



A man eating dinner with his cat (and judging from the size of that feline, that cat's enjoyed a lot of authorial leftovers). Now isn't that a lot more fun than the usual solemn author photograph?

Speaking of authors' bodies, I was looking at the searches via which people have reached my website and found this one:

susan s thigh stories

I hope the person who came to my website thusly wasn't too disappointed, but I very much suspect he was.

The Other Hugh le Despenser, and a Too Perfect Heroine

I'd like my blog entry today to honor Hugh le Despenser (d. 1349), eldest son of Hugh le Despenser the younger and Eleanor de Clare, who on August 24, 1346, as a prelude to the Battle of Crécy two days later, stormed the town of Le Crotoy, killed hundreds of French troops, burnt the town, and obtained plenty of provisions for the English troops, who were sorely in need of them at that time. (Granted, the French would probably take a rather dimmer view of Hugh's feats, but c'est la vie.) 660 years ago today--time flies, doesn't it?

Hugh is the subject of my work in progress ("progress" being used advisedly, but then even a snail moving forward is making some sort of progress, I suppose). I'm rather fond of him, not the least because he started out his adulthood in the most unpromising of circumstances, landless, imprisoned, and with a disgraced family name, and ended it as a respected solider and (apparently) as a loved husband. Not a mean feat when one considers that a different sort of man might have wasted his life in bitterness and grudge-holding.

You can read more about Hugh here.

On the historical fiction front, I found it amusing that the same day I read Sarah Johnson's post about finishing novels, I put down a novel after about 30 pages. (I won't name it because (a) I read so little of it and (b) I no longer have it here to double-check.) The heroine had nearly every virtue imaginable except one--humility--and on the few occasions when someone wasn't standing nearby to tell her how magnificently she had handled a situation, she told us herself. As there was hardly any room in the house for her ego and the rest of us, I decided that something had to go, and it wouldn't be the rest of us. Back to the bookstore for you, baby.

It's Cover Time Again!

Some time ago I blogged about Margaret Campbell Barnes's historical novel My Lady of Cleves. To my surprise, I saw it the other day on eBay under another name: The King's Choice. Here's the cover in its early 1950's glory, for the princely price of a quarter:


Nice, isn't it? This book actually credits the cover artist: George Mayers. In the front matter, it also lists not only the publisher, but its president and two of its vice presidents--in case, I guess, a reader didn't think he'd gotten his quarter's worth and wanted to go straight to the top.

A New Novel About Marie Antoinette

Having last blogged about two recent historical novels, I’m going to do myself one better today and blog about one that hasn’t been released yet: Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund. It’s to be released in October, so naturally, I’m looking at an advance reader’s edition.

Abundance is told in the first person by Marie Antoinette, and though it doesn’t purport to be a journal, it’s told in a journal-like fashion, with the events unfolding as the queen experiences them rather than in retrospect. From what I can tell (it’s not my period by any means), it’s well researched, and it’s sympathetic toward Marie Antoinette without minimizing her weaknesses. The other members of the royal family are rendered nicely too, especially Louis XVI. (For those who are wondering, Axel von Fersen is very much a presence here, though the queen’s relationship with him is a chaste one.)

In many historical novels about well-known figures, authors tend to jump from one Big Event to another, serving history while at the same time slighting character. Naslund tends to move in the opposite direction. While she covers all of the usual set pieces of Marie Antoinette’s life—her husband’s difficulty in consummating their marriage, her reluctance to acknowledge the Comtesse du Barry, her public childbirth, the Affair of the Necklace—Naslund tends to focus more closely on her more everyday, mundane interactions with her family and friends, at least until the revolution overtakes all normalcy. I especially liked the queen’s reminiscences about the hippotamus and rhinoceros in her childhood home, the scene where the royal family witnesses the launch of a hot air balloon, and the later scene where the queen is served “fruit” that turns out to be small balloons. (Through a later scene where another balloon launch ends in tragedy, Naslund neatly inserts a sense of impending disaster for the royal court as well.)

Once fate overtakes the royal family, Naslund conveys the increasing terror of their lives powerfully. Though she doesn’t give us an eyewitness view of the horror of the massacre of the Swiss Guard, the laconic way in which the queen recounts the event is chillingly effective in its very brevity: “It required only two carriages to carry away those of us who remained alive of the court of Louis XVI.”

I did find some things bothersome here. The dialogue is sometimes stilted to the point of being comical: “'Those red spots on your fair cheeks suggest measles,'” Marie Antoinette’s dear friend the Comte de Polignac tells her at one point. This may be to show the artificiality of court life, but if it is, it’s not done consistently; the same friend speaks to Marie Antoinette quite naturally at other times.

More problematic for me was this passage in the first chapter of Abundance, at which point the book nearly became airborne:

While my ladies flutter like bright butterflies around me, I glance at my naked body, a slender worm. Louis Auguste and I must be much the same, as all humans are really much the same, except for the difference of sex. We all have two legs—mine are slender—supporting a torso; two arms sprout on either side of a bodily cabinet, which contains the guts and bladder in the lower compartment and the heaving lungs and heart in the upper section. In between, for women, is the chamber called the womb. From the trunk, a neck rises up like a small lookout tower whose finial is the head.

I’m sure there must be some reason for this paragraph—which all but screams, “Look, Ma, I’m writing literary fiction!”—but I'll be blessed if I can see it; all I could think of was that clear child’s educational toy called “The Human Body” and then that old song “Dry Bones” (“The knee bone connected to the thigh bone!”). Fortunately, creative-writing-class passages such as this are relatively few and far between, especially in the latter part of the novel. I'm quoting this paragraph, in fact, only because it almost made me stop reading this book, and I'm glad I persevered.

In short, this is a book the merits of which far outweigh its flaws. Give it a try.

Two 2006 Reviews: Juana 'n' Jane

In addition to the reviews I do on this blog, I've also been doing some reviews for The Historical Novels Review. Here are a couple that appeared in the recently released August 2006 issue. (Reviewers there have a word limit, so you'll find these reviews more concise than many on my blog.)

The Last Queen
C. W. Gortner, Two Bridges Press, 2006

The Last Queen is the story of Juana “the Mad” of Castile, daughter to Isabel and Fernando and sister to Catherine of Aragon. Spanning the period from 1492 to 1509, The Last Queen is a gripping story of passion, intrigue, and betrayal.

The novel is narrated by Juana herself, looking back at her past from a span of decades. Gortner’s choice of narrative styles was a good one, for it allows the reader to experience events as Juana experiences them, without knowing whom can be trusted. The final betrayal of Juana, shocking to her, is even more shocking to us.

Juana here is not a madwoman, but an isolated, proud, and increasingly desperate one who is as determined to claim her throne as others are to keep her off it. Her story, which in less skilled hands could have been a dreary, didactic tale of male oppression and female victimization, is saved from being so by Juana’s voice, one that is candid, dry, sharply observant, and totally lacking in self-pity.

Gortner avoids falling into “historical novel speak,” rendering his dialogue in modern English peppered with the occasional Spanish phrase. The novel reads quickly, and although the events going on around Juana are complex, Gortner finds a happy middle ground between overwhelming readers with too much background information and bewildering them with too little.

Readers who appreciate author’s notes will find an informative one here, though I would have found it more helpful if Gortner, having told the reader that he took certain liberties with characters, time, and place, was more specific as to what these liberties were. This single quibble aside, this was an exceptionally good read about an intriguing, wronged woman.

Plain Jane: A Novel of Jane Seymour
Laurien Gardner, Jove, 2006

Young Jane Seymour is stunned when she overhears her parents discussing her future: as they consider Jane too plain to attract a husband, they will send her to a nunnery—at least when they can find one that won’t demand too high an offering. Jane vows to prove them wrong about this bleak prospect. She does so, spectacularly.

Unlike the earlier novels in this series, where ladies in waiting are major characters, Plain Jane focuses on Jane. Gardner’s Jane is an opportunist in the positive sense of the word, able to seize upon what life offers her and to make the best of it, whether it be an invitation to join the court or a chance to marry the king. The reader can’t blame her for pursuing the latter option, for the Anne Boleyn portrayed here is thoroughly disagreeable, sometimes to the point of caricature. Henry VIII, by contrast, is more complex: kindly to Jane most of the time, he is capable of turning viciously on her when she seems to him to be meddling in his affairs.

The writing style here is somewhat choppy. There are long stretches of one- or two-sentence paragraphs, which I found distracting. More problematic was the fact that Gardner at times carries the theme of plainness versus beauty too far. It seems simplistic, for instance, to ascribe Anne Boleyn’s downfall to her being so “deceived by her long reign of beauty” that she fails to understand Henry. On the whole, however, I found this novel to be an engaging portrait of a determined woman.

A Little Night Rambling

I finally overcame my Inner Cheapskate and signed up for a paid account on Library Thing, which allowed me to list all of my books instead of being limited to 200. (Interested in looking at my shelves? I'm boswellbaxter there.) I've still got a few things--most of my books about Dickens, for instance--to get on there, but I'd say well over two-thirds of my books are listed now.

It's not as impressive a list as it would have been about fifteen years ago, because repeated moves and a shortage of space have caused me to be pretty ruthless about culling my collection. Sometimes I've wished I hadn't given a book up, especially when it's one that's not readily available in libraries. For the most part, though, I haven't missed what I've gotten rid of--a lot of books, such as the couple I had by Virginia Woolf, had a certain snob appeal but were gathering dust because having read them once, I didn't have the slightest interest in reading them again. Other books I gave up because although I enjoyed them for a while, my tastes changed to the point that I no longer had any desire to re-read them.

There's a little group of books that I've had since the 1970's, however, mostly young adult books that I read when I was in my early teens. Some of them are by authors who are still known, such as M. E. Kerr, and others are by ones who have long since vanished into the shadowlands of Amazon, such as Leona Klipsch. I've dragged them up and down the East Coast for thirty years, and I still like to re-read portions of them from time to time. I suppose one might call these comfort books, which is odd because my adolescence was a time I couldn't wait to outgrow and a time about which I'm not at all nostalgic. All of them were reasonably well written, but a couple of them, like the Klipsch book (Treasure Your Love), were quite formulaic--nice girl falls in with mean clique, starts turning mean, comes to senses, asserts individuality, drops out of mean clique, and wins approval of nice boy who's been waiting for her to drop said mean clique. (Wasn't that the plot of the recent movie Mean Girls? I guess some things never change.)

Anyway, I really can't explain why I've held on to these books, but I'd be scrambling to replace them if they were ever lost.

Book culling has also been on my mind because I recently signed up at PaperBackSwap.com. (Because all mailing is calculated at United States media mail rates, it's currently available only to those areas served by the United States Postal Service.) It's a pretty good deal--you list books, pay the postage to ship them to members who request them, and earn credits that you can use to have books shipped to you by other members. I've already shipped five and am waiting for three to arrive, so it seems a cheap and pleasant way to move unwanted books off one's shelves and replace them with books one wants. I haven't had much luck finding the obscure historical fiction that I lean toward, but I've found a couple of things that I've been wanting. It's also fun just to see what shows up as newly listed--I've seen both Pamela Anderson and Henry James make an appearance.

Now that I've achieved my lifetime goal of using "Pamela Anderson" and "Henry James" in the same sentence, I'll retire for the evening. Toodles.

Those Wacky, Witchy, Plantagenets

As promised (c'mon, I know you've been tapping your fingers in anticipation), here's my review of My Philippa by Maureen Peters. My copy came all the way from Tasmania, and judging from its almost pristine condition except for sundry library markings, it'd been sitting quietly on the shelves of the library there for some time before being withdrawn and finding its way to eBay.

My Philippa, of course, is about Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, who's probably best known for pleading with her husband to spare the lives of the Burghers of Calais. It's typical of the oddity of this book that this famous incident is mentioned only in passing here.

Narrated by Philippa herself, this book covers Philippa's life from her marriage to Edward III to the beginning of his affair with Alice Perrers. The book has a very domestic quality about it; for the most part, the plot just revolves around Philippa's sometimes frustrating marriage (Edward III is a skirt-chaser) and her growing family. Despite Philippa's being relegated to the background, I found the book agreeable enough to read; Philippa's narrative voice has a refreshingly tart tone, and the narrative moves forward at a brisk pace.

There are a couple of odd features to this book. Peters ties together several characters by their adherence to the Old Religion--Roger Mortimer, Queen Isabella (slightly), Joan of Kent, and Edward III himself. Thus, Joan's famous garter is the Badge of the Snake Priestess, as Queen Isabella helpfully points out, and the Order of the Garter is equivalent to two covens. I'm not sure of the source of this link between the Order of the Garter and witchcraft, but it's not original to Peters; Evelyn Eaton in The King Is a Witch used the witchcraft theory on a much more elaborate scale, forcing Edward III to periodically look about for a Substitute Victim to keep him safely above ground. In Peters's case, what could be an interesting, albeit historically dubious, angle fizzles out, for Peters doesn't develop the witchcraft plot line much, but contents herself with having Bad Things happen whenever Joan of Kent appears on the scene.

The other peculiar aspect of the book is its portrayal of Edward III's son Lionel, Duke of Clarence, as being feeble-minded, albeit in a very charming manner. (Speaking of his desire to marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth de Burgh, the adult Lionel explains, "She is very clever and will read aloud to me in the evenings and I will give her rides on my horse.") I don't know of anything that supports this depiction of Lionel; it certainly seems inconsistent with his later career as royal lieutenant in Ireland. (And Lionel as an adult hardly had to ask permission to marry Elizabeth de Burgh, having been betrothed to her since childhood.)

All in all, I found this a peculiar little book, eccentric yet strangely likable. Its main appeal, though, will be to those who read all things Plantagenet.

Reay Tannahill Redux , and a Nod Toward the News

With all the things going on the world today and these past few weeks, it's occurred to me at times that this blog is a bit insular--rather like that Dorothy Parker short story "From the Diary of a New York Lady: During Days of Horror, Despair, and World Change," but without all the cocktails. However, I decided when I started this blog to leave politics to the political bloggers, and God knows there's enough of them without me putting my bit in.

So good job, UK, in catching those terrorists, and now back to historical fiction. (And at least one can still carry books on airplanes.)

Having enjoyed The Seventh Son, I toted Reay Tannahill's Fatal Majesty to the beach with me this weekend. It's about Mary, Queen of Scots, and I liked it even better than The Seventh Son. It's written in a similar style, with a very dry, sardonic tone to the narration.

Fatal Majesty switches back and forth between the English court and the Scottish court, and has a very wide cast of characters--wide enough, in fact, to be rather confusing for someone who isn't intimately familiar with the main players of the time. Most of the characters act entirely in their own self-interest, like so many spiders spinning their webs, and it is the convergence of these webs that eventually engulfs and destroys Mary.

Though Tannahill is sympathetic toward Mary, one gets a sense of distance, especially in the latter half of the novel. Indeed, Tannahill's favorite character seems to be Mary's Secretary of State, Lethington, which gives rise to what I thought was the novel's major flaw: once Lethington makes his final exit, Tannahill becomes far less engaged with her material, making the last fifty pages a bit of chore to get through. Tannahill covers thirty years in those fifty pages, and although there's a lot of intrigue packed in those years and pages, I found myself skimming. Worse, Mary herself appears only occasionally in them. That may have been to drive home the point that she was little more than the pawn of others during that time, but I would have liked to have seen more of Mary nonetheless. Still, this is a 450-plus-page novel, and the pleasure of reading the first 400 pages, packed full of excellent characterizations and dry wit, more than makes up for the relative weakness of the last fifty pages.

Coming soon: My Philippa by Maureen Peters.

Below: Onslow, the King of the End Table

In Which I Try the One Book Meme

Marg tagged me for this one, but Boswell being the publicity hound that he is, he insisted on my posting his interview first. Anyway, without further ado:

One Book....That Changed Your Life

Probably A Tale of Two Cities. I'd read classics before that, but more out of a sense of obligation and without ever becoming very emotionally involved in what I was reading. The book made me realize that a book could be both entertaining and enduring, and it ended up taking me in a lot of directions--educational and literary--that I might not have gone in otherwise.

One Book....That You've Read More Than Once

I've read a lot of books more than once, though these days I tend to re-read snippets of books rather than whole books. I'll say Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, one of my favorites.

One Book....That You'd Want on a Desert Island

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. A bit of everything--tragedy, history, comedy--to keep me going while I wait to be rescued.

One Book....That Made You Laugh

Anne Tyler's Saint Maybe. The scene where Ian's nieces and nephews try to fix him up with one of their teachers is hilarious.

One Book....That Made You Cry.

I can't think of a book that's made me actually shed tears, but there are many that have made my eyes well up, especially at the end. The last paragraph of Middlemarch is one that always does this, even though the book as a whole isn't one of my all-time favorites.

One Book....That You Wish Had Been Written

The book Charlotte Bronte was working on at the time of her death.

One Book....That You Wish Had Never Been Written

Can I count Anais Nin's diaries as one book? One of the most tedious evenings of my life was spent at a poetry reading where one of the presenters, for reasons best known to himself, decided to read from them instead of from his own work.

One Book....That You Are Currently Reading

Anne, the Rose of Hever by Maureen Peters. A very odd book which ties Anne Boleyn's death to the Old Religion.

One Book....You've Been Meaning to Read

Nigel Tranter's The Bruce Trilogy. I toted this book to the UK and back in 2004 but never read it (the atmosphere in tourist class just isn't conducive to long tomes), and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since calling my name. I guess sooner or later I should answer it.

I never was good at tag, so anyone who wants to join in can do so.

Meet the Author: Boswell

Some dogs can heel, some can play fetch. But how many dogs can write books? Not very many, I warrant. But Boswell, being an exceptional canine altogether, has just published his first book, with help from my daughter Bethany and Blurb.com.

Boswell has graciously agreed to take some time from his busy schedule to talk to me about his new venture.

Q: Boswell, how was writing your first book?
A: I would describe it as a cathartic experience, really. It helped a great deal in coming to terms with my greatest enemies—the bathtub and the vacuum cleaner—both of which are pictured within these pages.
By the way, why are there so many words that start with c-a-t and not so many that start with d-o-g? I smell a conspiracy.

Q: No, you smell dinner. Can you describe your book for us?
A: It’s a book about me and my times—the people and cats I live with, my typical day, the things I enjoy doing. Really, it’s the essence of my life as a dog, distilled into a few short pages.

Q: What gave you the idea to write a book?
A: At first, I just wanted to make the cats jealous. But then I realized that I had a unique, dogly voice of my own that was just crying out, begging to be heard, as opposed just to begging for leftovers.
And I've still made the cats jealous.

Q: Where can I buy it?
A: On Blurb.com. Not on Amazon or anything like that, which is just as well because if my Amazon ranking was better than Mom’s, she’d get all miffed and probably quit playing ball with me.

Q: No, I wouldn’t.
A: Yes, you would.

Q: Anyway, Boswell, what’s your next project?
A: I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about maybe venturing into historical fiction. Dad read a book about Robert E. Lee told from the viewpoint of his horse, and Mom read a book about Shakespeare told from the viewpoint of his dog, so perhaps I’ll go for a book about Mary, Queen of Scots told from the viewpoint of her dog. Or Anne Boleyn told from the viewpoint of her dog. Or maybe a book about the Knights Templar told from the viewpoint of their dogs. I think that’s the most promising project—Dogs of the Templars.

Q: That last one sounds highly marketable.
A: I know. I just need a good agent.

Q: If you find one, will you introduce me to him or her?
A: If you're a bit more generous with the leftovers from now on, Mom.

Would You Like to Come to My Place and See My Suit of Armor?

I was reading "God Squad," a syndicated column by Marc Gellman and Thomas Hartman, this morning and was struck by this question from a reader: "My daughter just started dating a guy who told her he was a Templar Knight."

Well, you can't say the guy doesn't have an original pickup line. (The God Squad suggested that the daughter might want to find another boyfriend.)

On the historical fiction front, I'm reading The Ivy Crown by Mary Luke, about Katherine Parr. It's well written, but it's proceeding at an extremely leisurely pace--I'm over 100 pages into it, and Katherine Parr's still not married her second husband! At the moment, she's in the periphery of the events happening over at court and has very little to do than to give her opinions on various matters and dispense good advice to her friends. Thomas Seymour shows up once in a while to get poor Kate's heart afluttering. At least he doesn't tell her that he's a Templar Knight.

Coming soon: a chance to meet a very special author.

The Joys of eBay, and Tudor Bunnies

One of my many weaknesses is eBay. A few years ago, doubtless as a reaction to turning a Certain Age, I began buying old Barbie dolls there, but this got a bit on the expensive side, not to mention the crowded side. So I’ve changed my eBay habits a bit, and now I bid mostly on books. I’ve got quite a few things there, historical fiction and otherwise, that I wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere.

Unless I’m looking for a particular book, I’ll usually just type in a search term and see what turns up. With a term like “Anne Boleyn,” that’s not a problem; almost everything that shows up is somehow related to the English queen, though as we shall soon see, sometimes in rather peculiar ways. On the other hand, “Edward II” can pull up things about the English king, but also DVD’s by a band called Edward II and the Red Hot Polkas and a line of women’s clothing (why not men’s clothing? seems a natural). “Gaveston” often brings up items relating to Galveston, Texas. And “Despenser” pulls in quite a few sellers who misspelled “dispenser.” These items raise some interesting mental pictures:

New Dinosaurs floating in blue liquid Soup Despenser
Deer Buck Antler Toilet Tissue Paper Holder Despenser

Of course, it’s easy enough to avoid results like these by limiting the search to books, but it’s not quite as much fun. And one time in one of my general searches, I came across a cast-metal figure of Hugh le Despenser’s son Hugh (d. 1349), dressed in armor and riding a destrier, which would have looked lovely perched on my hard drive. I duly put a bid in, but sadly, I was sniped. The jerk probably thought he was bidding on a toilet tissue paper holder.

In any case, did you know that Royal Doulton makes a set of figures called "Bunnykins" that include Henry VIII and all his wives? That's fate for you--divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, but all made into cute little bunny figurines.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Royal Doulton has a Bunnykins figure for Edward II or his favorites. Or for any of the Plantagenet kings. Someone clearly needs to get cracking on this. Or should I say hopping?

Brabeheart . . . Bradeheart . . . Gimme minute, Offishur . . . Braveheart!

I suppose one should feel some sympathy for Mel Gibson, who'd apparently been off the booze for a long time before very spectacularly getting back on it, but nah. Not when he's operating a car and endangering other people's lives. Not to mention when he spouts anti-Semitic garbage once he's arrested. Not to mention his very ungallant remarks to a female police officer. (William Wallace would never have treated Princess Isabella like that.)

A pity the historical accuracy police weren't on patrol that night also.

Richard III's Mother-in-Law, and My Five Favorite Historical Novels

Maybe you've been like the guy below, saying to yourself, "Gee, I wish I knew more about Richard III's mother-in-law, Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. I wonder where I could find out more about her." (Admit it. Of course you've been thinking this. It's been tearing at you this entire summer.) Well, ponder no more, but venture over here in my website, where you'll find a nice long piece about the countess. You can also find a piece about everyone's favorite bareback rider, Lady Godiva, written by novelist Octavia Randolph, and about everyone's favorite extortionist, Hugh le Despenser the younger, written by Alianore. (And since Hugh was also a pirate, you can get your summer pirate fix without even having to pay for movie admission and popcorn.)



Anyway, Carla posted about her five favorite historical novels, and invited others to join in. So here are my five, with the caveat that I tend to read only about people and time periods I'm interested in and therefore have undoubtedly missed some of the greats. (And though I've made a selection, it's not set in stone, or bronze for that matter; next week I could have five different choices.)

1. A Tale of Two Cities. This and Barnaby Rudge (which is hard going even for many Dickensians like myself) were Dickens's two ventures into historical fiction. Yes, there are some cloying bits, but you gotta admire a guy who goes to the scaffold all for the sake of the woman he loves.

2. Gone with the Wind. Granted, some of the racial stereotypes are cringe-inducing today, but this novel by Margaret Mitchell has two of the most memorable romantic leads ever created, and the other characters are equally compelling, as is the plot. (And though my ancestors fought for the South, I'm quite happy that the North won, so this isn't the view of a diehard Confederate.)

3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I read this Betty Smith novel during the same summer I read Gone With the Wind, right after eighth grade, and I count these two books as my first real venture into adult reading. I'm not sure this strictly counts as a historical novel--it was written in the 1940's and is set in the early part of the century. Still, it's a wonderful story of a young girl growing up in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, and as America changed a great deal between the time in which it was set and in the time in which it was written, I'm going to count it as historical fiction. So there.

4. Sharon's Penman's trilogy of Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, and The Reckoning. Some authors can take real historical characters and make them as dull as dirt--an amazing feat when you think of it. Penman's characters, on the other hand, are fully rounded, so much so that I find a few of them, like Joanna in Here Be Dragons, to be downright exasperating. That's a compliment; one gets bored with cardboard cutouts, but never exasperated.

5. Sandra Gulland's Josephine Bonaparte trilogy. It's difficult for an author to make the journal form work, but Gulland does. Josephine is a compelling heroine without being a politically correct "strong woman," and the book is lit up by a nice sense of humor.

Others I've really liked? Margaret George's The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Jean Plaidy's Murder Most Royal and The Queen's Confession, Brenda Honeyman's The Queen and Mortimer, Pamela Bennetts' The She-Wolf, and Reay Tannahill's The Seventh Son. Just to name a few.

(Oh, and I liked The Traitor's Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II also, by good ol' whatsername.)

Bag Full o' Books, and a Mixed Bag at That

Partly for fun, and partly in the noble cause of providing some fodder for the Medieval Miniatures section of my website, I've been reading some nonfiction lately. Here are a few interesting things I've checked out from the library:

Hazel Pierce, Margaret Pole: Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541. A well-researched account of the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, who survived Richard III's reign and Henry VII's reign, only to be executed by Henry VIII when she was well into her sixties.

Anne F. Sutton & Livia Visser-Fuchs, Richard III's Books: Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of a Medieval Prince. Much more, as you can tell from the subtitle, than a simple inventory of books found in the king's library.

Wendy Childs, editor, Vita Edwardi Secvndi: The Life of Edward the Second. A nice new edition of a chronicle written by an unknown contemporary of Edward II.

A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. One of the most readable Richard III studies I've seen, and one that neither romanticizes nor demonizes the controversial king.

All of these books can come to my shelf and sit anytime they want.

I'm also reading Joanna Denny's 2005 biography, Katherine Howard: A Tudor Conspiracy. Unfortunately, I can't put this book in the same category as the ones above. Denny states as undisputed fact that Henry VIII was the father of Mary Boleyn's children, when the prevailing opinion seems to be that Mary conceived them with her husband after the royal affair had ended, and she suggests, based on very shaky evidence, that Henry VIII had his own out-of-wedlock son, Henry Fitzroy, poisoned. She credits Henry VIII with having executed over 50,000 people (p. 133), a number that strikes me as incredibly high.

Since Katherine's short life and even shorter reign are notable mostly for her sexual conduct, Denny understandably spends a lot of time on sexual mores. While it's commendable that Denny recognizes that much of the behavior that would bring Katherine to the scaffold occurred at an age when she was easily led and vulnerable, Denny's discussion veers toward the ridiculous. She spends too much time on generalizations such as "sex was hurriedly performed in darkness" (p. 84--was there a fifteenth-century version of Masters and Johnson surveying couples?) and on overdramatics such as "her innocence had been traded for food and lodging from the age of seven thanks to a wastrel father and a callous family" (p. 194). She discusses at some length the custom of "bundling," stating that it was "an accepted part of 17th-century courting rituals" (p. 83) and even incorrectly citing Romeo and Juliet's postmarital night together as an example (p. 83, 87), but she never explains how this custom relates to Katherine, who by her own admission went much further than bundling in her relationship with Francis Dereham.

Denny eschews footnotes in favor of a listing of sources for each chapter. Unfortunately, this system is fairly useless for someone wanting to know a source for a specific statement, such as the 50,000-executions figure mentioned above.

In short, I found this a biography that offered more frustration than information. As there has been relatively little nonfiction written about Katherine Howard, though, those interested in Henry VIII's wives might find it worth their while to get a library copy.

Alison Weir's novel, and Hamlet on the Highway

I finished Alison Weir's first historical novel, Innocent Traitor, today. This is Weir's take on the story of Lady Jane Grey, the "Nine Days' Queen." The story spans the time from Jane's birth, when she sorely disappoints her parents by not being a boy, to her death.

Weir chose an interesting narrative style for her novel. Instead of the time-honored (and very shopworn) "let me look back upon my life upon the eve of my death" first-person narration, she tells Jane's story through a variety of first-person narrators: Jane, Jane's nurse, Jane's mother, Queen Jane Seymour, Queen Katherine Parr, Queen Mary, John Dudley, and, finally, Jane's executioner. Several people who have read the book have commented that they disliked the jumps from narrator to narrator. I didn't find this bothersome, as it allows the reader to know things that Jane could not have known and to witness events she could not have witnessed; it also allows Weir to give necessary background information without sounding strained and artificial. Futhermore, the device of the multiple narrators enables Weir to make points without beating them in: for instance, we can see, as Jane and Mary can't, how much in common the rigidly Catholic Mary has with the rigidly Protestant Jane. (Sometimes, too, the multiple narrators add some comparatively light relief in what's mostly a rather dark novel, as when we discover what Queen Katherine Parr really thinks of Jane's mother.)

My only objection to the narrators, in fact, was that men were underrepresented. The only man we hear from regularly, John Dudley, is a thoroughgoing villain; though his perspective was a useful one, it would have added more balance to the book to hear from others as well, preferably more complex, conflicted men than he. I especially felt the absence of not knowing what Jane's father was thinking--or not thinking--when he laid his final, unsuccessful plot. I would have also liked to hear more from Jane's callow husband.

Jane and her family are handled well. Jane's parents treat her shabbily and insensitively, yet Weir manages to convey all of their considerable flaws without making them completely hateful. (Jane's mother Frances, genuinely grieved over her daughter's impending death yet still able to arrange to console herself with her young master of horse, is especially memorable.) Jane herself is a well-rounded character: strong-willed and good-hearted, yet with a self-righteous, almost irritating streak that saves her from being simply a pathetic victim.

All in all, I finished this novel feeling a genuine sense of loss, and I'm looking forward to Weir's next excursion into historical fiction.

Next on my reading list: an excursion to the lighter side of life with An Assembly Such as This, a Pride and Prejudice fan fiction from Darcy's point of view. Nary a chopped head to be found in this one, I trust.

By the way, when driving today, I noticed that the car in front of me had license plates reading 2BRNT2B. I presume Hamlet's failure to use his turn signals was a symptom of his famed inability to make up his mind, but I'm not sure what would explain his speeding. Perhaps his distress over the state of Denmark. Or maybe the funeral baked meats didn't agree with his digestion. Anyway, slow down, dude. The readiness is all.

Mickey Spillane Does the Wars of the Roses

When you’ve been reading the Mickey Spillane obits, and you’ve been researching the Wars of the Roses, and it’s late at night, and you haven’t updated your blog in a few days, this is what happens. Really.

The future Edward IV to Eleanor Talbot

"It isn't going to be easy getting through this engagement, kitten, but let's keep it cool until we do."

(—Black Alley)

Edward IV to George, Duke of Clarence

I said, "George, you've forgotten something. You've forgotten that I'm not a guy that takes any crap. Not from anybody. You've forgotten I've been king because I stayed alive longer than some guys who didn't want me that way. You've forgotten that I've had some punks tougher than you'll ever be on the end of a sword and I stabbed them just to watch their expressions change."

He was scared, but he tried to bluff it out anyway. He said, "Why don'tcha try it now, Eddie?"

(—Vengeance Is Mine)

Buckingham to the future Richard III

“You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you haven't got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. That's where I come in. You'll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes I'll get shoved aside and you slap the crown on."

(—I, the Jury)

Richard III before the Battle of Bosworth

I used to be able to look at myself and grin without giving a damn about how ugly it made me look. Now I was looking at myself the same way those people did back there. I was looking at a hunchbacked guy with an ugly reputation, a guy who had no earthly reason for existing in a decent, normal society. That's what the chroniclers had said. . . .

I was a killer. I was a murderer, legalized. I had no reason for living.

(—One Lonely Night)

(For the excerpts on which these are based, see The Unofficial Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer Site by David Seong. Tell him Suzie sent you.)

(On a totally unrelated subject, it was a pleasure to see this today.)

Girls, Girls, Grammar

It's been at least two months since I've been to the beach, a long overdue trip. So I was pleased to go there this weekend. (While there, I finished reading a big fat historical novel, but I can't blog about it because I'm reviewing it for the Historical Novel Society.)

Part of the fun of going to the beach is reading the signs in the small towns we pass through to get there. For some time, one of my favorites has been this hand-lettered one: "Boil Peanuts. Circle Drive." Unfortunately, we can never follow this command, since we don't carry the implements necessary to boil peanuts, which it seems is a prerequisite to circling the drive, wherever that might be.

As our trip to the beach takes us through a military town, strip clubs are in abundance, and my very favorite sign used to be that of a club that offered wrestling in various types of substances, changing weekly. Sometimes the substances even had a seasonal theme: during Thanksgiving, for example, cranberry sauce was the ingredient of choice. About a year ago, however, the signs stopped advertising wrestling, presumably either because the club proprietors ran out of ideas for new substances or because the city officials decided that the public health was at stake. After that, the sign settled down to the dull and seldom changing "Girls, Girls, Girls!"

This weekend was no different, except that in addition to advertising girls, girls, and girls, the club added "Good Times Everyday" to its sign. Had I possessed a stepladder, and were I not afraid of being mistaken for one of the "Girls, Girls, Girls," I could have moved the magnetic letters over just a fraction, enough to transform "Good Times Everyday" into "Good Times Every Day." That task being completed, I could have driven to the beach with a lighter heart. Alas, I could not, and had to console myself with writing this blog entry upon my return in the feeble hope that the club owners see it and mend their ways.

So, this post is void of historical fiction content, you're thinking? No, indeed! Why, here's Onslow the cat playing amongst the historical fiction. You'll note that he's next to a group of Sharon Penman and Jean Plaidy novels and is investigating Paul Murray Kendall's biography of Richard III. But whether Onslow likes his roses red or white is a mystery to me, and most likely will remain that way.

If They Loved It Once, They'll Love It Again

I once was on a list where one writer threw a hissy fit that another writer on the list was using “her” title for a novel in a very different genre and with an entirely different target audience. (Oddly, neither writer appeared to realize that the title both were using had been used years before by a well-known novelist and that the novel in question was still a top seller on Amazon.)

It’s a good thing neither of these writers was publishing historical fiction, where some titles are so good that they keep popping up again and again, both within and without the genre. Mind you, I’m not suggesting that this is at all illegal or unethical—my own novel, in fact, shares a moniker with at least two older books, one a 1908 novel long out of print, the other a 1960’s novel out of print but still easily had on the secondhand market. Perhaps, however, it’s time to retire some of the titles below, just like the jerseys of football and basketball greats:

The Court(s) of Love. Used by Jean Plaidy, Denee Cody, Peter Bourne, Alice Brown, and Ellen Gilchrist. Not to mention Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Prince of Darkness. Used by Sharon Penman, Paul Doherty, Jean Plaidy, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, Susanna Firth, Ray Russell, and Patricia Dexheimer, just to list a few. And Ozzy Osbourne had a go at it too.

The Sun(ne) in Splendo(u)r. Used by Sharon Penman, Jean Plaidy, Juliet Dymoke, Colin Maxwell, and Thomas Burke. There’s also a book called Splendour in the Sun, which got me to humming an immensely annoying 1970’s song called “Seasons in the Sun” (“We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun”). Quick, someone play some Ozzy Osbourne.

Gay Lord Robert. Used only by Jean Plaidy as far as I know (in a 1971 novel about Robert Dudley), but it takes a very, very manly man to go into Barnes and Noble nowadays and declare, in ringing tones, “I would like to order Gay Lord Robert.”

Then again, my husband once walked into a bookstore and ordered a book called The Brave Little Toaster for me. A manly man, indeed.

My New Advertising Campaign, and Chanel Pearls of Wisdom

Just when I was beginning to wonder how I would next promote my novel, Alianor, through Bourgeois Nerd, pointed toward The Advertising Slogan Generator. Here are just a few. I'm on my way to have the T-shirts printed now:

I Can't Believe It's Not Traitor's Wife

You've Always Got Time for Traitor's Wife

A Traitor's Wife a Day Helps You Work, Rest and Play

My Goodness, My Traitor's Wife!

Give the Dog a Traitor's Wife


It may be, however, that I don't need a campaign, because excerpts from my back cover copy are showing up in decidedly weird places. What Eleanor de Clare and fourteenth-century England have to do with "Your Health and Air Cleaners" is a deep mystery to me, and how my jacket copy ended up on "Chanel Pearl Sunglasses" is an equal mystery, but at least the Chanel pearl sunglasses sound pretty classy. I'll look for some the next time I'm shopping, if I haven't spent all of my money on health and air cleaners.

Maybe Katharine Hepburn Would Have Helped?

Being in that King John kind of mood, I've been reading Myself as Witness, a 1979 historical novel by James Goldman, best known as the author of the play The Lion in Winter. When you've written a play full of zingers like "Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!" it's sort of hard to repeat one's success, so that should be borne in mind here.

I left this novel with mixed feelings. It's told by Giraldus Cambrensis, an aged man who's hauled out of his retirement in Lincoln to serve as John's chronicler, and it covers the last four years of John's reign. Goldman notes that in his earlier works, he followed convention and treated John as violent, unstable, and unprincipled; here, he says, he took a more balanced view.

Unfortunately, were it not for the author's note, I would have had a hard time deciding exactly what view Goldman took of John. This, I think, is the main problem with this book--that the character of John remains curiously unfocused, opaque. We see John's temper, his flashes of insight, his bitter wit, his intelligence, but it's never quite clear what motivates his actions or how he sees himself. I would say that this is because of the limitations of the form here, a first-person narrative by Giraldus told in diary style, except for the fact that other characters are very sharply etched for us. Isabelle of Angouleme, for instance, is depicted vividly not as the usual sex kitten but as an intelligent, frustrated woman. Giraldus himself, though mostly cast in the role of observer and occasional confidant, is a memorable character. William Marshal is done well here, in the thankless role as a voice of reason ("I've had enough of you Plantagenets," he says toward the end.)

Aside from my frustration over the somewhat hazy picture of John (and who knows, maybe this is what the reader is supposed to feel, that one can never really truly know another person), this book has many merits, and it's certainly worth reading. It's very well written, with some vivid scenes and sharp turns of phrase, and the last few pages, covering John's last days, are particularly well done--it's the part of the novel, in fact, where I at last began to feel I was getting a clear sense of John's character. And given that John so often comes across in historical novels as a stage villain, doing everything but twirling a moustache and crying "Aha!" every two pages, I give Goldman high marks for avoiding caricature. I just wish he had delved a little deeper here.

As I speak, Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir is making its way over the Atlantic toward me, so soon I'll be doing a rare blog for me: a review of a 2006 novel!

My Favorite Constitutional Amendment

Happy Fourth of July! If you're in the USA and you're reading, ranting, raving, or writing today, take a moment to appreciate the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A Love Story Set in Wales

I’ve heard good things about John Cowper Powys’ historical novel Owen Glendower, but haven’t had the inclination to wade through it yet. Instead, I bought a copy of White Lion, Red Dragon, a 2003 historical novel by Nobilia Paen about the marriage of Edmund Mortimer to Catherine, daughter of Owen Glendower, here spelled Owain Glyn Dŵr. (An interesting feature of this book is that the back jacket copy is in both English and Welsh.) It’s available on Amazon.uk.

The author describes this as a love story, and it is, without being a romance novel. Catherine, called Cathi, is forced to disguise herself as a boy to evade her father’s enemies. She falls into the hands of a farm couple who put her to work, still in her guise as a lad. When Edmund Mortimer is injured and taken prisoner, she nurses him, and nature takes its course when a recovering Edmund stumbles upon Cathi bathing. The couple gain their freedom and marry, bringing Edmund over to the Glendower cause.

I found Cathi and Edmund to be extremely likeable characters, presented by Paen with affection, sympathy, and even some gentle humor. Cathi remains sweet and somewhat naïve even after tragedy after tragedy strikes, bearing her trials with admirable fortitude. Edmund, though brave, kindly, and good to his dependents, is not always the sharpest tool in the shed: it takes him two full pages to get the hint after an older woman comments knowingly on the cause of Cathi’s sudden nausea.

Having a deep dislike for novels featuring heroines who have mystical visions or who foretell the future (though never as helpfully as one might wish, and never enough to spoil the plot), and having found that such heroines often seem to crop up in historical novels about Wales, I was relieved to find a dearth of visionaries here. And though this is a love story between two attractive young people, we’re spared the endless descriptions of the protagonists’ physical perfection that often figure in such tales.

White Lion, Red Dragon is narrated in the third person but mostly from Cathi’s point of view, so most of the historical events unfold as they are told to Cathi. This can be confusing at times and also somewhat limiting, as major historical figures like Hotspur and Glendower himself appear only briefly here. It would also have been nice for the author in her short note to provide a little more detail as to the likely fate of Edmund and Cathi’s son, Lionel, instead of the unenlightening comment that Adam of Usk “knew a very great deal more than he dared to write.”

This novel isn’t an epic tale in the tradition of Sharon Penman or Nigel Tranter; those who are looking for something like that here will probably be disappointed. As a moving love story between two good people whose happiness is tragically cut short by political upheaval, however, White Lion, Red Dragon is well worth reading.

Michael Hicks' Anne Neville Biography

I’ve been reading Michael Hicks’ Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III, a biography that has excited much outrage among Ricardians, mainly for its description of Richard III as a “serial incestor.”

Hicks’ description is based on Richard’s marriage to Anne, his sister-in-law, and his supposed plans to marry Elizabeth of York, his niece. Although, as Hicks points out, a papal dispensation for Richard and Anne’s marriage has been discovered very recently, it addressed their relationship as cousins, not their relationship as brother-in-law and sister-in-law through the previous marriage of Richard’s brother George to Anne’s sister Isabel. By not having sought to address this relationship, Hicks writes, Richard and Anne were essentially living in sin and bastardizing their son. Though Hicks does “deplore the immortality of the match,” as he puts it, he does later acknowledge that the marriage was “the best possible outcome for Anne,” in light of her precarious circumstances at the time.

I’m no expert in canon law, so I can only say that Hicks’ statement that a dispensation would have been needed to cover the in-law relationship seems correct, especially in light of the fact that Henry VIII would later obtain a dispensation to marry his sister-in-law Catharine of Aragon. (In any case, those who believe that Richard III would not have possibly married Anne without a proper dispensation, thereby jeopardizing the future of his heirs, seem to have no difficulty at all believing that Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville while he was still married to Eleanor Butler, thereby jeopardizing the succession to the throne.) It may be, however, that Richard and Anne believed that the dispensation they received was adequate.

Richard’s next act of incest, according to Hicks, was his intent to marry his niece. Evidence of this proposed marriage comes from a letter supposedly written by Elizabeth of York herself, now lost, and chronicle evidence that Richard publicly denied wishing to marry Elizabeth. As no marriage was actually contracted, however, and there is no reason to think that Richard would have risked marrying his niece without getting a dispensation, the description of him as a “serial incestor” does seem overwrought. So too does the strange comment in the epilogue that Anne “experienced high society and lots of parties, two husbands, fashionable and expensive clothes, plenty of sex, child-bearing, and lots of admiration and deference.” Though this comment should be taken in context, that of Hicks’ statement that Anne had a “full life,” he has no way of knowing that Anne with her one child had “plenty of sex,” and neither do we. In any case, the sex she had was within the context of marriage, or in what Anne probably thought was a valid marriage. Whoever Anne was—and Hicks reminds the reader frequently that not much is known about her—she was probably not the Paris Hilton-like creature that this passage implies.

Nonetheless, this book is worth reading. Hicks diligently draws together what is known about Anne’s life, and he attempts to consider events as Anne must have seen them from her point of view, though he’s hampered in this effort by the lack of historical detail about Anne and the scanty records of her everyday life. He’s fair-minded, as a reading of the whole book reveals, and those who focus in on his controversial and sensational remarks alone are doing Hicks, and Anne, a disservice.

Confessions of a Peeper: A New Poll

I have a confession: When I read a novel, I peep at the ending very early on, sometimes even before I buy the novel or check it out from the library. It doesn't matter what type of novel it is (even mysteries are not immune); it doesn't matter whether I'm enjoying it or not; it doesn't matter whether I'm going to finish it or not; it doesn't matter whether it's 200 pages or 800 pages. I'll peep regardless.

Clearly, I would have had a rough time of it during the days of serial publication, where I'd have to wait my turn just like everyone else to see whether Little Nell died.

I'm sure I can't be the only person with this shameful secret, but I've yet to hear someone else confess to it. So how about it? Take the new poll on the right and help determine how many of us there really are. It's anonymous, so don't worry--if you answer "Always" or "Sometimes," the Anti-Spoiler Police won't come and get you. (At least, they haven't come for me yet.)

Speaking of polls, dog people won my last poll about two to one.

Meme Time Again: Five Folks I'd Like to Meet

Here’s an interesting meme going around that Carla, Alex, and Gabriele C among others have each picked up on: five historical people you’d like to meet (or to know more about).

This one took a bit of pondering. I excluded people I’ve written about (too likely to say, “Bimbo, you got it all wrong!") and literary figures, though I’d love to meet Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare. (It wouldn’t be much of a meeting, though, as I’d be standing there in gap-mouthed awe.) So here’s my five.

The Princes in the Tower. (I'll cheat and count them as one.) What actually did happen to the two of them?

Juana "the Mad." I've been reading a novel about her, and she sounds intriguing. Was she a madwoman, the victim of the ambitious men in her life, or both?

Marie Antoinette. Another historical figure about whom interpretations seem to differ widely.

Anne Boleyn. A woman who had a fascinating mixture of qualities, and whom people seem to have either hated or adored.

Edward IV. Was there a precontract with Eleanor Butler or was there not? And would he try to seduce me?

More Book Hanky-Panky, and a Dark New Theory

First, as one of the hockey fans in my house has suggested that this blog is a tad too insulated from the real world:

Go 'Canes! (Who won the Stanley Cup last night, resulting in the very unusual situation of something going on in the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, after midnight.)

Second, in response to my post about my books' remarkable ability to reproduce, Carla posted the following comment:

Just occurred to me to wonder whether you can identify the culprits from population genetics, e.g if romances inexplicably proliferate then it's a fair guess the books are behaving like their protagonists (though IME most romances have a rabbit-like [or rather, dunnock-like] level of activity but a surprisingly low level of fertility). Whereas if The Law of Real Property and its fellows predominate, then lawyers must have hidden depths the rest of us can only guess at.

I wonder what the offspring of a law textbook and a historical romance might be? Anyone care to hazard a guess?

This seemed far too interesting to bury in the Comment area. Personally, I think that a law textbook and a historical romance might give birth to something like The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, which has some Really Bad Guys, like a romance, and a lot of wrangling over property, like a law textbook. It's also, like a law textbook, really heavy (I bought the hardcover when I was pregnant with my son and found that I couldn't bear to haul both it and him around) and very, very long. It's lacking, however, in the Gorgeous Heroine and HEA areas. But children often do lack the notable qualities of their parents.

What is multiplying on my shelf is historical fiction, which makes me think that the history books are somehow involved. It may well be that they're mating with the few historical romances in the house, which like those inside them are not necessarily adverse to serial partners.

It's possible, of course, that my books are behaving themselves, and that instead there's a conspiracy on the part of the post office and Amazon to keep sending me books. But I haven't investigated that dire scenario properly yet.

A Father's Day Look at Gilbert de Clare

Having posted about Eleanor de Clare’s mum for Mother’s Day, I’m posting about her dad for Father’s Day. (Symmetry is everything.)

To put it very briefly, Gilbert de Clare (1243-1295) had a stormy relationship with both Henry III and Edward I. During the Barons’ Wars of the thirteenth century, he allied himself with Simon de Montfort, then broke with Montfort and went over to the side of the royalists. Gilbert de Clare was among the leaders of the royal forces that defeated Simon de Montfort at Evesham. Interestingly, one of the men who died with Montfort was Hugh le Despenser, whose grandson, Hugh le Despenser the younger (“name the baby” books were not on the Despenser bookshelves) eventually married Gilbert de Clare’s daughter Eleanor. One wonders if the match was arranged partially to heal wounds still left over from Evesham, though Gilbert de Clare was long dead when it took place.

Gilbert’s first marriage, to Alice de Lusignan, was evidently an unhappy one, though it produced two daughters. It was eventually annulled, and Gilbert married Edward I’s daughter Joan of Acre in 1290. Alice’s daughters, though not impoverished, were barred from inheriting their father’s lands. Despite the marriage to Joan, which produced four children in five years before ending with Gilbert's death, king and subject’s relationship remained a tense one to the very end: in the last months of Gilbert de Clare’s life, Edward I seized Glamorgan from him, restoring it to him six weeks before Gilbert’s death.

There may have been a softer side to Gilbert, however. Toward the end of 1292, he wrote to the royal chancellor to apologize for not attending the king, giving as his reason the fact that the illness of one of his young children (either his son, another Gilbert, or his newborn daughter Eleanor) had kept him in Wales longer than he had expected. This could have been a sham, of course, but one hopes it wasn’t.

A full, and very interesting, account of Gilbert and his family can be found in Michael Altschul’s A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares, 1217–1314.

Like his wife, Gilbert has made it into several historical novels. Falls the Shadow, Sharon Penman’s novel about Simon de Montfort, contains what is probably the most accurate depiction of Gilbert: shown there as a young man, he’s hot-tempered, sensitive to slights, and violently anti-Semitic (a trait he sadly shared with many others of the time, however), though not without some higher principles. Jean Plaidy in Hammer of the Scots, a novel about Edward I and his family, depicts Gilbert as so softened by his marriage to Joan that he loses all interest in butting heads with the king, a portrait that doesn’t mesh with history.  In Vanessa Alexander’s The Love Knot, a love story/mystery involving Joan of Acre and Ralph de Monthermer, Gilbert is dead when the book opens, but the picture of him that emerges is hardly a flattering one: he’s a hard-drinking, brutish husband who dabbles in the occult and whose sexual relations with his wife are little better than rapes. Most recently he turns up in Virginia Henley’s forthcoming Infamous, a historical romance in which Joan of Acre, who has more than adequate bases for comparison, highly approves of his prowess in bed.

With Gilbert’s shifting political allegiances, the dramatic events he was involved in, and his stormy first marriage, he really deserves a novel all to himself. Anyone game?

Hanky-Panky in the Stacks

Now that our flooring’s down and the sofa is no longer sitting on its side in the kitchen (don’t ask), the bookshelf is full again—but over the two nights that it was empty, I observed a strange and disturbing phenomenon.

My books are reproducing amongst themselves. Yes—they’re having book sex, and as a result, they’re giving birth to more books.

There’s no other explanation for this. When I started to reshelf my books, there were far too many to fit in, so I ended up having to banish a couple of dozen to my garage, where everything that won’t fit on the shelves in the living room or in the master bedroom goes. (It’s no disgrace, by the way, for a book to be shelved in my garage. George Eliot is in my garage. Thomas Hardy is in my garage. Anne Tyler is in my garage. Sharon Penman is in my garage. Am I in my garage? Hell, no—I’m special.) And this was after we had given some of the books on the shelf to the public library.

Anyway, now that my books are back on their shelves, maybe they’ll behave themselves and stop carrying on like characters in a steamy historical romance. Either that, or their offspring will end up in the garage sharing space with The Law of Real Property, and I wouldn’t wish that on any book.

Reading note: I’ve started All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald, a memoir about growing up in a housing project in South Boston. Very good reading so far, though after James Frey I’m a little wary about memoirs. If MacDonald has dental work without anesthetic, I’m bailing.

Edward III Joins the "Me Too" Meme, and It's About Time

I see that Roger Mortimer's been spouting off. (I'll be damned if I'll call him the Earl of March.) Now that my looney scribe's stopped taking pictures of her bookshelves and popping bubble wrap, I'll finally have my chance to reply.

I am: Edward III, teenage king of England.
I want: to be a real king, not Mother and Mortimer's puppet.
I wish: I got to wear my crown more often.
I hate: it when Mother and Roger Mortimer smooch in public. Get a room!
I miss: my father, in a way.
I fear: that I might turn out like my father.
I hear: that Uncle Edmund's been acting a little strange lately. What's with him?
I wonder: what Mortimer's going to get up to next.
I regret: Mother and Mortimer deposing my father, sometimes. That was sort of extreme. But at least I'm king.
I am not: stupid. Mother's not the only person in the family who can do the meek act, you know.
I dance: with Philippa, my wife. When are Mother and Mortimer going to get around to crowning her, by the way?
I sing: off key, but Philippa says it sounds lovely. She's cool.
I cry: to think of how those Scots got away from that so-called warrior Mortimer. It'd have been different if I'd been in charge.
I am not always: the type of guy who sits around brooding. I like a good joust as well as anybody, and I really enjoy working on getting an heir with Philippa. She's hot.
I made: Mother and Mortimer look pretty silly in front of the Scots when I refused to go to my sister Joan's wedding.
I write: to the Pope about what a jerk Mortimer is.
I confuse: my cousins the Bohun twins with each other. (But at least I have a good reason, unlike some dolts with the initials RM who can’t keep their daughters straight.)
I need: a plan and some good friends to help me carry it out.
I should: give Mortimer a kick in the behind the next time he walks ahead of me. Especially if I’m wearing pointy shoes.
I start: to think that it'd be fun to be King of France too.
I finish: everything on my plate because Mother tells me to do so. But not for long.

Bare Naked Bookshelves

I'm not sure what's sexier, a big empty bookshelf or a bookshelf lined with books. In some ways, I think the first is more tantalizing, because it's waiting to be filled, whereas the full bookshelf may upon inspection be full of something disappointingly uninteresting, such as cookbooks (apologies to the cooks out there).

Anyway, as everything in my living room has to be moved tomorrow so that new flooring can be laid down (thanks, cats!), I thought I'd take a picture of one of the rare moments when my biggest bookshelf is absolutely free of books.

Where are the books, you might ask? Piled up in my bedroom around my work computer and in my daughter's bedroom around her desk. Contractors willing, they'll be back in their appointed places tomorrow night, and perhaps even in some logical order (Dickens on one shelf, medieval biographies on another, etc.). Well, a girl can dream, anyway, can't she?

In the meantime, it's given Boswell the dog and Onslow the youngest cat the opportunity to act the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Quite the talents, aren't they?

Feline or Fido? An Utterly Unscientific Poll

Maybe it's just me, but when I surf around to blogs or websites of other people interested in history or historical fiction, I seem to encounter more cat people than dog people, judging from the pictures people post and the comments they make. And when people comment on my own website, they quite often mention my Cats Galore page, but not the My Buddy Boswell page (my cairn terrier's page). So this makes me think, are people who like historical fiction more cat-loving people or dog-loving people?

(I myself am a cat person of long standing, as anyone who's had the misfortune to view our carpet and chairs can attest. Every item I wear bears a patina of cat hair, courtesy of the four felines who run our house. In 2001, however, I got Boswell, and he's almost made a dog person out of me. So it's a close one.)

In any case, to help resolve this burning question, please vote at the place provided in the sidebar.

Coming soon: bared bookshelves.

Barnes, Bees, and Book-Buying

I’ve been reading some historical fiction over the last couple of days, but as two of the books I reviewed were for The Historical Novels Review, I can’t post those reviews here until they appear in print. (By the way, if you haven’t been to the Historical Novel Society’s website, check it out—it’s well worth a look.) I did, however, finish My Lady of Cleves, by Margaret Campbell Barnes.

My Lady of Cleves was published in 1946; it contains a dedication to “the women who lost the men they loved in the fight for freedom.” For a sixty-year-old historical novel, it’s held up remarkably well. Barnes's prose is uncluttered and easy to read, nothing purple or fusty about it.

Barnes’s characterization of Anne of Cleves is interesting and refreshing. Though there doesn’t seem to be much reason, historically, to take Henry VIII at his word in describing her as a “Flanders mare,” she’s often treated as such by novelists. Here, Anne is attractive, though not in the style that appeals to Henry, and she’s even given romantic yearnings for none other than Hans Holbein. How accurate this is I have no idea, but as the relationship isn’t depicted as having an effect on history or as giving rise to any offspring, I can live with it. Anne’s a capable woman who longs for children of her own and who satisfies her maternal instincts by mothering Henry’s brood. At the same time, she’s no saint; jealous of Hans Holbein’s mistress at one point, she takes the opportunity to sleep with Henry VIII, now on his fifth wife.

My Lady of Cleves is an appealing story of a woman who makes the best of a bad situation. There seem to be used copies readily available; pick one up if you’re a fan of Henry VIII and his womenfolk.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken a detour from historical fiction for a few days to read a new book by James Maguire called American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of World Nerds. It’s an entertaining nonfiction book about, as you guessed, the National Spelling Bee and the young contestants who enter it. It contains an interesting history of spelling bees in America, a brief history of the development of the English language and its American version in particular, profiles of contestants, and a look at the competition itself. If you enjoyed the documentary Spellbound a couple of years back—I did—you’ll probably like this book. (Years ago, I won a sewing box for winning my fourth-grade-class spelling bee. For some reason, I felt obliged to use the box for its intended purpose. Poor Barbie never had so many sack-like garments as she did the summer after fourth grade.)

Finally (yes, I pressed the “ramble” key on my keyboard tonight), at last I broke down and ordered Michael Hicks’s biography of Anne Neville, queen to Richard III. I’ve heard negative things about the book, but from sources biased heavily against Hicks, so it’ll be interesting to see for myself what it's like.

Random Thoughts, and a Driving Question

While I was in Barnes & Noble Saturday night (yes, I'm a party gal, what can I say?), I heard a little boy nearby say to his father, "But I can't pick just one!" I feel this child's pain.

Also, while driving (or being driven) on the interstate today, I briefly stopped cringing and wishing I'd updated my will long enough to observe that the car ahead of us bore the license plate NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche was driving a nondescript green sedan, too quickly for me to see the make, but it didn't look very new. Not being a student of philosophy, I'm not sure if this was an appropriate car for him to be driving or not. Anyone have any idea?

On the same lines, I've often wondered what type of car various historical figures would drive (or be driven in) if they were alive today. Anne Boleyn, for instance, strikes me as the Lexus sedan sort, whereas Henry VIII might well go for an SUV. I think Hugh le Despenser the younger would be a Hummer man, though he might well disagree. Maybe a Volkswagen Beetle for Catherine Howard, and a sensible minivan for Catharine of Aragon. Edward II might like a beat-up pickup (good for carrying around all that roofing equipment), or maybe an old Volvo. I'm still pondering what car to put Isabella of France in, though I'm leaning toward a bright red Porsche.

Thoughts?

Suspisious, or Suspicious, Minds

In the midst of a jolly day yesterday, I surfed over to Amazon and discovered that The Traitor's Wife had received a one-star review, or to put it more accurately, a comment. It consisted of a sentence, in which the writer stated that she was suspicious that the Alianor who had given me a five-star review was none other than yours truly. So burdened was the author by this suspicion, and so eager to share it with the reading public, she spelled it "suspision," having evidently forgotten in her haste about the modern-day convenience of spell check.

Well, to set the record straight, I am not Alianor. She lives in Europe; I live in the United States. She's younger than I am and probably much better looking. Nor am I either of the males who have kindly left Amazon reviews for me, nor I am ForeWord Magazine, nor am I any of the reviewers who are quoted on my website. Nor am I Janet Maslin or Michiko Kakutani. (Neither of them has yet weighed in on my novel, but I like to cover all my bases.) I don't have time to lead a double life; it's all I can do to work, make excuses for not writing, blog, and wait on my dog and cats.

Now, since the Amazon "reviewer" didn't have anything to say about my book itself, I can only assume that she was at a loss for words to express sufficiently her sheer disgust and revulsion. To help her, and anyone else who might find herself or himself at a loss in similar circumstances, I'm including some zingers here from the queen of book reviewers, the redoubtable Dorothy Parker*:

• "I wish I could say 'rotten.' You don't know how much I need to say it." (From "Mr. [Sinclair] Lewis Lays It On with a Trowel")

• “I have yet to have an author inform me that a character is charming, and then, by that character’s deeds and conversation, convince me of that fact.” (From “These Much Too Charming People”)

• "Tonstant Weader Fwowed up." (From "Far From Well," a review of Winnie the Pooh)

• "May Heaven help you, as it assisted me, through the travelogues, the debates, and the grotesquely over-drawn figures that clutter it." (From "And Again, Mr. Sinclair Lewis.")

• "I know that Mr. Dreiser is sincere, or rather I have been told it enough to impress me. . . . But I will not--oh come on with your lightning again!--admit that sincerity is the only thing." (From "Words, Words, Words")

• "Mr. [Tiffany] Thayer's latest work is called, with that simplicity which is the gaudiest flower of pretentiousness, An American Girl. I am at a loss to comprehend why this was the selected title, since the book displays any number of American girls, all alike in seeming to be, as Henry James said of George Sand, highly accessible." (From "Not Even Funny")

Well, this should be enough to get anyone started, I think.

*Quotes from The Portable Dorothy Parker, Penguin Books, 1973

Piles o' Books, and a Question about Opinion

The Amazon and eBay gods have been smiling upon me, as well as the library gods, so I have several historical novels to read. I'm in the middle of My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes, and so far I think it's the best of her novels I've read. More to come.

I've got Two Women of Galilee by Mary Roarke teetering on my coffee table, and Myself as Witness by James Goldman (about King John) and Lionheart by Martha Rofheart are stacked on my bookshelf. I'm particularly interested in the James Goldman book. He was the author of The Lion in Winter, a play that I find immensely fun to watch. This is supposed to be a more sympathetic view of John than his portrayal in the play, though from the little skimming I've done, it doesn't appear to be a whitewash of his character.

By the way, I think most people, including myself, will be inclined to pick up a book if it's recommended by someone whose opinion they respect, but what about the opposite situation? I ask because one of the main reasons I bought the Goldman book was because a poster on a list that I read occasionally was trashing Goldman in general and The Lion in Winter in particular, and I figured that anything this particular poster disliked so much had to be worth reading. What about you folks in Blogland? Are there critics, professional or otherwise, whom you find so off-putting for whatever reason that you figure that anything they dislike has to have something going for it? (I could mention politicians and evangelists who have the same effect on me, but I'll leave that to the political bloggers.)