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The Boleyn Inheritance (Phillipa Gregory)
May. 9th, 2007 09:20 amThis is kind of what I would call a "trashy book"-- it reads very quickly, there's a fair amount of romance and sex, the heroine (such as there is) is a bit of a Mary Sue, and the evil "villain" character comes to a bitter end (well, one of them does, at least)-- but it has the virtue of sticking pretty closely to actual fact. (I guess a character can't be a Mary Sue if she, you know, actually existed, huh?) I really, really liked this book, for whatever reason (I wasn't really expecting to-- I absolutely despised her book on Elizabeth I, The Virgin's Lover, but then again I really adore Elizabeth I and specifically hated the portrayal of Elizabeth as a simpering lovesick girl-- I mean, come on, remember the imperial young princess of The Perilous Gard? I can imagine her falling in love, but not simpering.) and I suspect that calling it "trashy" is slander, as I think it probably took some amount of skill to write.
In particular, the book is narrated by Anne of Cleves, Jane Boleyn (the late Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law), and Katherine Howard, all of whom are unreliable narrators (though for very different reasons), so it's hard to pin down exactly what's going on (though you can pin down Katherine immediately-- she's just flightly as a sparrow, and there it is) until the middle of the book or so. Until then, if you know the history, and especially if you're like me and you know just enough of Anne Boleyn's story to be uncertain of what you know, and very little of what happened after Jane Seymour, you're sitting there going, "Wait... But I thought... Is that really what's going on?" And then you figure out what's really going on, and yes, oh, okay. I really like books with unreliable narrators, especially several of them, because then it's like a puzzle.
I especially just adored Katherine Howard, who manages to be completely airheaded and yet cute and sympathetic (and even sensible in a peculiar and ultimately useless but still sympathetic sort of way) -- in the sections she narrates she never descends to a point where I feel annoyed at her for being stupid, more amused, as if one were watching a home movie of a really, really cute little kid who keeps saying funny things that are silly half the time and spot on the other half.
I liked this rather better than THe Other Boleyn Girl (which is the story of Anne Boleyn as told from her sister's point of view-- did you know Anne had a sister who was also Henry VIII's mistress? I sure didn't), to which this book is a kind of sequel, more-or-less. Probably because I didn't find Mary Boleyn's character all that interesting or appealing in that book, and I thought all three of the narrators here were rather more engaging. If one were to read The Other Boleyn Girl first, though, I'd let some time elapse before reading The Boleyn Inheritance-- I suspect reading them both together would be too much. Plus which I suspect it makes it much harder to have the sympathies you need to before the plot twists.
Also, I think that she ought to have used more of the characters' actual (or at least reported) words, instead of having them talk like romance-drama characters (like Bolt in Man for All Seasons (not to, you know, obsess that you should all see/read this!!)-- Bolt could not have improved on More's totally awesome speeches if he'd tried. Of course, Thomas More was the Man, and Jane Boleyn not so much, but still, she sounded better than that incoherent mess), but you can't have everything.
In particular, the book is narrated by Anne of Cleves, Jane Boleyn (the late Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law), and Katherine Howard, all of whom are unreliable narrators (though for very different reasons), so it's hard to pin down exactly what's going on (though you can pin down Katherine immediately-- she's just flightly as a sparrow, and there it is) until the middle of the book or so. Until then, if you know the history, and especially if you're like me and you know just enough of Anne Boleyn's story to be uncertain of what you know, and very little of what happened after Jane Seymour, you're sitting there going, "Wait... But I thought... Is that really what's going on?" And then you figure out what's really going on, and yes, oh, okay. I really like books with unreliable narrators, especially several of them, because then it's like a puzzle.
I especially just adored Katherine Howard, who manages to be completely airheaded and yet cute and sympathetic (and even sensible in a peculiar and ultimately useless but still sympathetic sort of way) -- in the sections she narrates she never descends to a point where I feel annoyed at her for being stupid, more amused, as if one were watching a home movie of a really, really cute little kid who keeps saying funny things that are silly half the time and spot on the other half.
I liked this rather better than THe Other Boleyn Girl (which is the story of Anne Boleyn as told from her sister's point of view-- did you know Anne had a sister who was also Henry VIII's mistress? I sure didn't), to which this book is a kind of sequel, more-or-less. Probably because I didn't find Mary Boleyn's character all that interesting or appealing in that book, and I thought all three of the narrators here were rather more engaging. If one were to read The Other Boleyn Girl first, though, I'd let some time elapse before reading The Boleyn Inheritance-- I suspect reading them both together would be too much. Plus which I suspect it makes it much harder to have the sympathies you need to before the plot twists.
Also, I think that she ought to have used more of the characters' actual (or at least reported) words, instead of having them talk like romance-drama characters (like Bolt in Man for All Seasons (not to, you know, obsess that you should all see/read this!!)-- Bolt could not have improved on More's totally awesome speeches if he'd tried. Of course, Thomas More was the Man, and Jane Boleyn not so much, but still, she sounded better than that incoherent mess), but you can't have everything.
