Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

As many of you may have noticed, I'm rather fond of historical fiction.  It's not possible to talk about historical fiction without mentioning Philippa Gregory, author of the absorbing 'The Other Queen', which I have just finished.

'The Other Queen' tells the story of the early years of Mary Queen of Scots' imprisonment.  I say imprisonment, in reality it's more like house arrest for her and a financial trap for her 'jailers', the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as George Talbot and the legendary Bess of Hardwick.  The book explores the destructive force of a ruler in exile, the damage caused by hearts and minds in conflict and the curse in disguise of a royal houseguest.  From the moment Queen Mary enters the lives of Bess and George, she changes them forever and in ways naively unanticipated by the key players.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I read Ms Gregory's 'The Virgin's Lover' about a year ago and was a bit disappointed by it.  'Historical fiction' is actually quite a broad category and, although I love books which bring historical figures to life and capture the politics and sense of place of an age, I can't bear the romances, which do us all a disservice by eroticizing history rather than helping our understanding of it.  Although there is an element of romance to 'The Other Queen', it is not the whole driving force behind the story, so I found it  more enjoyable.

'The Other Queen' by
Philippa Gregory
(Harper Collins, 2009)

'The Other Queen' has three narrators, Mary, Bess and George, and their voices and stories are brilliantly woven together by the author to give us insight into the internal and external conflicts and contradictions they're each experiencing.  Like a portent, the arrival of Queen Mary seems a catalyst for a series of events that may have been brewing for a long time, such as the Northern Uprising, George's honour being tested and Queen Elizabeth's great spymaster William Cecil tightening his grip on the country's upper classes.

My only (very small) criticism of this book is that there are a few points when the writing seems to slip into a modern style.  For example, at one point George says that he's "fighting for his life here." which jarred with me as a reader and broke the spell.  I'm no expert of Tudor English, but it was hard not to hear George suddenly become a modern American when reading that line.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  It's three narrators make the story dynamic and tense, while trying to keep up with who is lying to who about what is challenging.  A great introduction to a number of controversial characters that I hope to read more about in future (and probably will due to the fantastic bibliography at the end of the book!).

Now, what next?