As usual, Gregory delivers a spellbinding (and definitely York-biased) exposé.
In the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, the new queen of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty, struggles with divided loyalties.
After he returns from exile to defeat Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth, Lancastrian conqueror Henry Tudor marries Yorkist princess Elizabeth, daughter of Richard’s predecessor, King Edward IV. The marriage, intended to finally reconcile the warring Yorks and Lancasters, does the opposite. Edward’s dowager queen Elizabeth Woodville (The White Queen, 2009) and her sworn enemy Margaret Beaufort, Henry’s mother (The Red Queen, 2010) engineer the marriage, each to promote her own agenda. Princess Elizabeth, who had been the lover of Richard III, is horrified to have her distrust of Henry and his mother confirmed by a pre-wedding rape: Henry and Margaret want to make sure she proves fertile before vows are taken. After her marriage, and the “premature” birth of son Arthur, Elizabeth forms an uneasy truce with Henry that will lead, eventually and after the birth of more children (including future king Henry VIII), to an interlude of genuine affection. However, her mother and she remain York sympathizers at heart, particularly after their young cousin Edward Warwick is placed under house arrest in the Tower. This is an ominous reminder of the imprisonment of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth’s two sons, Edward and Richard, in the Tower, from which they later disappeared. Rumors abound: Prince Richard may still be alive and may be coming to England to assert his entitlement to kingship, far superior to Henry’s. Both Elizabeths know more about such claims than they dare let on: Years before, they had substituted a pageboy for Richard when the two princes went into captivity. A ruthless monarch who rules by intimidation, Henry can never escape the nagging fear that a Yorkist heir will unseat him, especially since the Yorks are so much more likable and better looking than the Tudors.
As usual, Gregory delivers a spellbinding (and definitely York-biased) exposé.Pub Date: July 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2609-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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