Knight takes Queen, Queen takes Pawn...

Who would've thought it, finishing two books in one week!

I've just finished 'The Virgin's Lover' by popular historical novelist Philippa Gregory.  This is the fourth book of hers I've read, the others being 'A Respectable Trade', 'The Queen's Fool' and (the one she'll probably always be remembered for) 'The Other Boleyn Girl'.

'The Virgin's Lover' tells the story of the illicit love affair between Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley in the early years of her reign.  Caught in the middle are Dudley's unfortunate wife, Amy, and the arch-politician William Cecil.

'The Virgin's Lover' by
Philippa Gregory
(HarperCollins, 2005)

Normally, I find Gregory's books hard to get into, but once I'm a few chapters in, I can't put them down.  On this occasion, however, I got into the book straight away... but got a bit bored in the middle.  I really don't like pure historical romance and what felt like chapter after chapter of secret assignations became a bit tiresome after a while.  Gregory's books are at their best when they balance personal and political plots and this is quite a narrow story without a lot of politics in it.  When the court intrigue began to develop towards the end of the book, I began to enjoy it much more.

Elizabeth and Robert are quite hard to get to grips with.  Elizabeth I's story has been told so many times and in so many ways, it's quite difficult to deal with her as a bit of a sap who puts her lust before her belief in her right to rule.  It seems a bit out of character considering how hard she fought for the throne in the first place for her to risk handing it all over to an obvious prat like Dudley.  Then again, maybe once she was finally in power, she almost frightened herself and began to doubt her ability, perhaps regressing until she came to terms with it and regained her confidence.  Or maybe I just find it hard to see what she saw in him!

Now, I'm not a violent person, but I did spend most of the book hoping someone would slap Dudley.  Preferably Elizabeth.  And preferably with a spade.  In fact, the more I think about it, this story wasn't really helped by the fact that the two leads were terribly aggravating for the most part!  Amy was arguably also quite annoying, but on the whole I found I had a lot of sympathy for her and, although I knew things couldn't turn out well for her, I somehow hoped she would find some sort of happiness.

As always, Gregory's great strength is her ability to create an incredible sense of time and place.  It's wonderful to be able to immerse yourself in a different context at the end of a hard day and forget all about the real world for a while.  Thank you, Ms Gregory!

On the whole, I think this was a good book, if a slightly thin story, and well told.  In the hands of a lesser writer, the three leads could have become intolerable, so it's a credit to Gregory that they don't.  But because there isn't a very meaty story here, I think this is perhaps more of a holiday read than her other stories.

I have a copy of Jean Plaidy's 'Lord Robert' on my shelf as well, so I will be interested to see how the two books compare.  I think that will be for a later date, though, time for a change now I think!