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• The Queen's Fool : A Novel
Philippa Gregory, 2004 - 512 pages

average customer review:based on 196 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended






Gloomy

I love Philippa Gregory's books, especially about the Tudor era. This one slides over into the relentlessly gloomy. It was a perilous time for high and low, Catholic or Protestant by turns; but the heroine's thoughts never stray from the imminent possibility of death because she is a "converted" Jew, although she gains a privileged position with both of Henry the VIII's daughters at court. Likewise both Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth dwell nearly every waking moment on the possibility they will be either overthrown and put to death or put to death for treason. Yes, but there had to be more to these women. Mary enjoys brief happiness on her marriage, soon dashed. Elizabeth shakes in her boots virtually all the time. Elizabeth was a brilliant woman, considered to have the genius IQ her father, Henry, is also deemed to have had. Yet Gregory has Mary accuse her of being a bastard by a lute player, which has to be taken as Mary's hatred and paranoia. Elizabeth had too many traits in common with her royal father for anyone to believe this slur was anything but a false accusation used to send Anne Boleyn to the block. Gregory does like to revise general views of historical characters, and portrayed Anne Boleyn as a raving shrew in THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, with Katherine of Aragon rightly the victim she was. Anne Boleyn was calculating and selfish, but lost her head because she didn't bear Henry a son. However, I see a pattern emerging of soft-pedaling of the excesses of the old Catholic order and the Inquisition, while the Protestant monarchy that prevailed is denigrated by unpleasant accusations about Elizabeth, and there is inexcusable downplaying of Bloody Mary's campaign of mass murder of suspected Protestants by burning at the stake. Much blood was spilled before Mary, with priests and Catholics true to their faith masquerading and in hiding; but Elizabeth did not start burning Catholics when she took the throne. That she was a callous seductress even at age 14, rather than an awakening teenaged girl chased and perhaps seduced by Thomas Seymour, is ludicrous. Supposedly she even--gasp--swung her hips when she walked to seduce Mary's husband, Phillip. That doesn't play for me. It was a tightrope she walked, not instead her wicked nature to be a tease. She probably wasn't a virgin queen, only an unmarried one; but I think Gregory tries too hard to paint her as less sympathetic than Mary, when Mary was a woman almost addled on the subject of religion and devoid of conscience at what she did. Not that a lot of people weren't then, and still are now--witness Northern Ireland and the Islamic terrorists who bomb innocents in the name of their religion. I have to confess much as I love historical fiction, and know religious fanaticism played a threatening role in that world, I am getting bored with characters who natter on about it all the time. I disliked much about THE BIRTH OF VENUS by Sarah Dunant for this reason--I want a human story to dominate in a novel, not constant thoughts of saints or what is the correct route to heaven. Hannah Verde is the protagonist, yet she is dwarfed by the events portrayed; and there were contrived events that conveniently sent her back to England when she escaped that clunked in the plot. This isn't like Philippa Gregory, not the writer I've admired. I now hesitate to read on in her Tudor series.


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Recommended

This is the first Philippa Gregory novel I've read, and I chose this one because of the slight fantasy of the main character's "sight" that she uses to foretell events. This aspect I would have enjoyed had the author used it more; however, then it would be even more of a fantasy than historical fiction. Regardless, the story held my interest and I liked the characters.









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A Fool Caught in a Very Strange Web

Philippa Gregory weaves a very different tale with a completely fictional narrator, young Hannah Green. As other reviews have noted, Hannah and her father flee the Spanish Inquisition, and start a new life in London, where she is discovered as having the gift of "Sight" by none other than Robert Dudley, who presses her first into service for the young King, thus beginning of a life of courtly intrigue.

As always, Gregory writes compellingly and interestingly, and I kept turning the pages because I wanted to know how it would all turn out. I give this book four stars instead of five due to its abrupt ending and due to Hannah's ever-changing loyalties and attitudes. It was difficult to take her seriously when she pledged eternal devotion on one page and conveniently forgot it on the next. This was a very interesting take on Queen Mary, however, giving her far more sympathy than I was expecting to see. It is easier to understand how she was conflicted by her duties to her God and to her Country, as heinous and inexcusable as her policies happened to be.


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You're a Fool if You Don't Buy This Book!

I am obsessed with Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels. This one originally didn't interest me as much as the other ones but it ended up being one of my favorites. The supernatural/"holy gift" of Hannah's "sight" makes this book a hard one to put down. I look forward to Philippa's new book that comes out later this year.


The Other Boleyn Girl, then The Boleyn Inheritance, then The Queen's Fool

In this one Gregory creates a lovely, strong fictional character who is confidante to both Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) and the young Princess Elizabeth. Read it! It'll knock your socks off!


reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16



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