THE BEHEADING GAME

The further adventures of Anne Boleyn, post-decapitation.

“First, learn you are in your own grave. Next, unwrap your headless body from its shroud. Then, unwrap your head.” Lehmann’s debut novel (following several collections of poetry) begins as Anne wakes up in a wooden box, climbs out, tucks her head under her arm, and leaves the church. She steals a boat and crosses the Thames to a rough neighborhood where she’s able to snag some sleeping woman’s sewing basket and reattach her head to her neck, covering it with a collar made from a silk cloth once used to swaddle her daughter, Elizabeth—she’d hidden it in her bodice on the way to her execution so she could be buried with it. Head in place, she goes out into the neighborhood to find something to eat and plot her revenge. The version of Anne that Lehmann has created is both familiar and novel: To the willful, passionate, ambitious character depicted in myriad historical and fictional accounts, she adds plenty of utterly original embroidery (this Anne is a bit of an intellectual, and also bi!). Fans of Wolf Hall will enjoy Lehmann’s versions of the many common characters, from Henry and Cromwell to Thomas Wyatt and Jane Seymour; though this book has a wild ghost-story premise, it ends up being just as convincing, and the prose has an ungaudy lyricism, a lucidity, and a timeless quality that stands up to Mantel’s. The various urban and rural settings are evoked with such convincing detail that we have no problem accepting the appearance of a white bull in the forest that follows the resurrected royal “like a puppy” and eventually becomes both transportation and security guard. Another invented character, a part-time prostitute named Alice whom our heroine meets on the streets early on, helps Anne out of many a jam and is the focus of a compelling plot line about friendship, social class, and women’s lot in 16th-century England.

Brilliantly imagined, stylishly written, satisfyingly plotted, full of delicious surprises: all in all, hella fun.