A NET FOR SMALL FISHES

Jago’s novel retrieves two women “from the limbo of misogynist stereotype”: the Countess of Essex, Frances Howard, and commoner Anne Turner, both of whom were charged with fatally poisoning a courtier in the Overbury scandal, which rocked the court of King James I in early-17th-century England.

The women have strong wills and good looks in common. They are also both dangerously Catholic during a Protestant monarchy. But their friendship is never quite equal as seen through Anne’s eyes. Married to the duke’s personal physician, she holds a patent for the yellow starch used in ruffs and dabbles in designing dresses for high-born ladies to make ends meet. Frances is a member of the politically influential Howard family (as were two wives of Henry VIII, as Wolf Hall fans may remember). In 1609, Anne has been hired to help the 18-year-old countess dress to win over her impotent 17-year-old husband, the Earl of Essex, who has been whipping Frances raw during their loveless three-year marriage. (Almost as an aside, 34-year-old Anne brags that her own impotent husband condones her long affair with the father of her three youngest children.) As narrator, Anne at first seems more observer than participant, an outsider sharing her insights on the nobility, particularly Frances—a great beauty with a defiant streak—but it becomes clear that Anne recognizes that helping Frances reach her magnetic potential at court may raise her own station. As Essex’s vicious attacks escalate, Frances begins an affair with Sir Robert Carr, King James’ favorite, and the newly widowed and increasingly impoverished Anne becomes her sole confidante. Both idolizing and resenting the countess’s self-centered privilege, Anne finds herself helping Frances acquire potions and illegal magic to control first Essex, then Carr’s malevolent aide Thomas Overbury. Frances' motivations are clear: passion and revenge. But Anne’s are a murkier mix of loyalty, desperation, and ambition.

An empathetic—but not entirely sympathetic—portrait of women in the male-dominated society of post-Elizabethan England.