The plot is brilliant.. if you're 5 years old

books:

	• The Queen's Fool: A Novel (Boleyn) Philippa Gregory Touchstone, 2004 - 512 pages average customer review:based on 201 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Worth Reading After The Other Boleyn Girl

I have to give Philippa Gregory a big THANK YOU! for approaching this story from a different perspective from The Other Boleyn Girl. It delves into the lives of those in poverty without straying far from the lavish lifestyles of English royalty and wealth. Again I was attached to the characters and their struggles while learning much about the time period and historical events. There were a few very alluring relationships between the narrator and the men she encounters creating a whirlwind of emotions for the reader but in the end, I was very pleased with the romantic outcome of the book. So if you are deciding whether or not you'd like to read this after having read The Other Boleyn Girl, I greatly encourage you to do so, you won't regret it!

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The plot is brilliant.. if you're 5 years old

3 stars only because Hannah is a fascinating character. The story however is preposterous and insulting. Unlike the boring "The Other Boleyn Girl" (too many insipid women chasing after a dull man), this book has good characters, especially the heroine Hannah who is intelligent, curious, and interested both in people and in ideas.

Hannah's circumstances are implausible but acceptable as improbable fiction. However, there is a difference between improbable and impossible. It's not possible that a human being would love that monster, Bloody Mary, when her own mother had been burned alive by people like her. What child, or any human being of flesh and blood would do this?

Not to say that Hannah herself is sent to the stake by this very "nice" lady! And what does Hannah do? Just exactly the opposite of what you and I would do. She runs back to her Queen like a good little girl. But then book characters know they'll end up well anyway so they can take big risks. How convenient of the author to have Hannah saved juuuust at the right time from inquisitorial torture.

Hannah is a sensitive and perceptive person. How can such a person feel great empathy for someone tortured in the Tower or burned to death, and at the same time be blind to the hand that sets these horrors in motion?

Despite the author's great efforts to present a different picture, I found Elizabeth a highly likable person. Many authors of historical fiction portray her as promiscuous, although I believe the historical evidence for it is scant. One wonders why they feel a need to diminish such a great woman... but then again, it seems the norm with great female historical figures.

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Exciting

I enjoyed reading this book on vacation because it was fun to read in long stretches. I actually read 200 pages in one day. It was one of those books that you can't wait to get back to. I read this book AFTER I read THE QUEENS LOVER but chronologically this one might have been better to read before that one. It is as close as you can get to a 'behind the scenes' look at the monarchy during the reformation.

One of Philippa Gergory's best...

After reading The Other Boleyn Girl, I became a huge fan of Philippa Gregory's. She is a talented writer who approaches historical stories from unusual points of view. As I've read more of her work, however, I've become increasingly frustrated with her loose interpretation of historical fiction. Occasionaly Gregory has been known to actually change history, or propose historical "what ifs" that are just preposterous.

That is not the case with The Queen's Fool. Here, Gregory lives up to The Other Boleyn Girl. The story is told from the point of view of Hannah Green, a Jewish girl who has fled the Inquisition in Spain with her father after her mother's death. They relocate to London during the reign of Edward VI. Hannah's rare ability, the Sight, is quickly noted by Sir Robert Dudley and his tutor, John Dee. Dudley, a calculating courtier, brings Hannah into his service. Gregory flawlessly weaves Hannah's story with that of the Tutor monarchs, while weaving in interesting historical stories such as the failed plot to put the Lady Jane Grey on the throne, the constant backstabbing of England's lesser royalty, Mary's marriage and false pregnancies, her persecution of Protestants, and the fall of Calais.

Gregory could not have picked a better point-of-view character. Hannah is very young at the beginning of the book, and her view of the people and events that surround her reflect that -- yet because of the fact that she is secretly a Jew, she easily observes that other people have hidden secrets as well. As Hannah matures throughout the book, so does her point-of-view.

The real genius of the story, however, is that Gregory chose to portray Mary as the good princess and Elizabeth as the bad princess. It was interesting to see the "human side" of Bloody Mary. Gregory made Mary's rationale for her actions believable without excusing her behavior. (She also did a nice job showing the limits on women's power at the time -- even the limits of the Queen's power because she was a woman). In making Elizabeth the bad princess, she flushed out theories that historians have had for centuries. While I think she went a bit overboard on Elizabeth's promiscuity, she did balance her character out enough that Elizabeth doesn't feel one-sided.

Overall, this is a fast read through a tumultuous time in history. It is definitely one of Gregory's better books.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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