Philippa Gregory

Satisfying new series set in Cromwell's England.

I am still recovering from the ending of this, the first in series Fairmile. Set in 1648 at the time of the English Civil War this dramatic tale reeks of authenticity, penned by the masterly hand of Phillipa Gregory.
The cover is a satisfying reflection of what my mind conjures up as I imagine the novel's geographic description. Tidelands is set on Sealsea Island, off the Wessex Coast. With its shifting sands and dangerous waterways, the show more community and the Island itself reflects the swirl of place and times and becomes so much more. The tide has swung against the rule of Kings. Cromwell's parliament is in charge.
And into the Tidelands, seeking help for King Charles, comes a young priest, a spy for the royal family and their followers sequestered in France, masquerading as a tutor and known as James Summer.
Waiting in the churchyard this Midsummer Eve was Alinor Reekie. She "went to the graveyard in case [her husband's] ghost was walking, so that [she'd] know for sure that he was dead... When [she] didn’t see his ghost, [Alinor] knew he must be alive, and was choosing not to come home."
The two chance upon each other here, on this waning eve, and in that meeting their lives and those of others will change.
Gregory takes us through these desperate times when Englishmen are at odds and the monarchy is overturned.
A time when a woman skilled in herbs, must be vigilant and do nothing to have people label her a witch. A woman who seems to be succeeding on her own. Times when a woman without a husband--neither widowed or subject to a husband is a suspicious entity. But when jealousy and fear are present, when surperstitions run rife, then any previous regard for Alinor's kindnesses and skilled treatment doesn't hold sway.
I was submerged in Alinor's story, the community she dwells in and the wider unrest that will infect them. My heart was heavy as circumstances were wrenched from her control. Love and betrayal it seems go hand in hand, and the meek are definately not inheriting the earth, when rumour, resentment and anger are involved.
After declaring eternal love for Alinor, it seems James' love cannot stand the tests presented. The gulf between Alinor's sense of right and the devout James' real being, his sense of self and worth, become glaringly obvious.
A skillfully woven tale set in turbulent times opening up new possibilities.

An Atria Books ARC via NetGalley show less

Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy is my guilty pleasure. Written by a lesser author, and lacking Gregory's flawless and flowing grasp of eighteenth century social history, these novels could easily be dismissed as romantic potboilers. Indeed, Wideacre, The Favoured Child and Meridon contain all the ingredients of a soap opera in prose form - red-headed heroines, gypsies, love affairs, rape, incest, murder ... And yet somehow, Philippa Gregory gets away with it. Meridon nearly tipped the show more scales for me, but once again, I was gripped and had to keep reading.

Meridon Cox, raised by a gypsy and sold to a showman, knows she doesn't belong in the bare and brutal life of a traveller's daughter. She dreams of a large golden house and a place known to her only as 'Wide', and of a broken-hearted woman by a river calling 'Her name is Sarah!' This vision of her destiny, and the love of a beautiful dark-haired sister called Dandy, is all that keeps Meridon going through the hard work and hardships of her early years. But when Meridon, who was not born to the land like her mother and grandmother before her, comes to reclaim her birthright as squire of Wideacre, she finds that money and power come at a great cost.

Meridon - Sarah Lacey, daughter of Julia - is the product of two incestuous unions between brother and sister, so she should probably have three eyes and webbed fingers, but the sins of the ever-decreasing Lacey family tree are more internalised than that: the girl has serious issues. I itched to slap her throughout, especially when she ran away from the circus and 'found' her place at Wideacre. What was so special about Dandy, who obviously wasn't her sister and was a slapper to boot, that made Meridon worship her? Why should the villagers of Acre have to pay for her massive grudge against men and the world at large? She was also rather too free with her whip. And then I realised that my reactions were being skilfully crafted by the author, who wants the reader to turn against Meridon, so that when she finally fights back, we are cheering her on! I swallowed the tragedy on the trapeze, and the mythical connection with the land, and the deathbed chicanery, all because I knew Meridon/Sarah would get her own back in the end.

And that's when Meridon - and Philippa Gregory - let me down. The ending is ridiculous, even for this trilogy. Women dressing up in breeches and a cap and being taken for a man is the worst kind of cliched, unbelievable plot device in historical romance, and yet the denouement of the novel is hinged on just such a gimmick. No one, least of all her husband and a room full of con artists, would believe that Sarah was a man, just because she cut her hair short and spoke with a deep voice. Perhaps the author was pushed for time, or couldn't think how else to rescue Sarah from her mother-in-law's clutches, but the last few chapters were a complete let down for me. The whole novel was basically reduced to Meridon working through her grief and learning a valuable moral lesson about the evils of wealth. I enjoyed the rest of the saga, learning about horses and aerial performers at the circus - and at least Meridon had more spine than her mother, Julia - but what a disappointing finale!

I would definitely recommend Wideacre to the unsuspecting reader, but neither of the two sequels match up to the first novel, and both Julia and Meridon are inferior to Beatrice for sheer cunning and audacity. But that's inbreeding for you. show less

This is definitely the strongest Philippa Gregory novel I have read to date! What a wonderful, magical, in-depth portrayal of a young and relatively unknown woman who saw extreme turmoil during her lifetime. This novel is the definition of being at the center of everything. Margaret Tudor takes us from inside the Tudor court to Stirling Castle to the highlands and to exile in the borderlands. We meet the larger than life figures of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII, James IV, and Archibald show more Douglas, her scoundrel second husband.

Throughout all of this, Margaret maintains that she is also fascinating and complex and a force to be reckoned with. Too often, these narrators become mere lenses for the reader and don't actually have any impact on their world, but Margaret makes decisions, both good and detrimental. It's riveting to watch her on fortune's wheel.

Some complain that Margaret is too whiny and self-centered, that she constantly complains over and over again about petty things. I argue against this because, it's used as a basis for Margaret's growth. While Margaret constantly goes back and forth between resenting and admiring her sister-queens, you see her growth as her views on why she resents her or admires her sisters change. She recognizes Katherine's fear of divorce and reads through Mary's lines while also being fed up with them, and this took great skill on Gregory's part.

While it may not be wholly factual (it is historical fiction), Margaret is a woman who goes after what she wants and wins. Not many women in the past can say that, so she is definitely someone to read about. show less

Three Sisters, Three Queens is a first person account of the life of Margaret, Dowager Queen of Scots, the older sister of Henry VIII of England. The two other queens are her sister, Mary, younger than Henry, and her sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon. Knowing the events of the English court so well, it was very interesting to imagine what might have been going on in the mind of a related queen who was so far away from the drama, but immersed in a drama of her own.

No one handles historical show more fiction with more elan than Philippa Gregory. I always feel I am there and know these people intimately. I have to remind myself frequently that this is fiction and that the historical person may have felt none of these emotions and carried few of these convictions. But, Gregory can pull me right into her view most of the time.

I do think it would be beyond difficult to be raised as a favored daughter, indulged, praised, and then to be sent away for a marriage of political convenience, left widowed, treated poorly by both your adopted country and your birth nation. From where inside themselves did the women of this time pull the courage and fortitude to keep on defying the odds and surviving the hardships? Everyone seems to have wanted to be royal, but I would have been praying for myself that I might occupy a well-respected position much further down the chain. Being a man would mean constantly being called out to war, brutal war at that; being a woman would mean having no control over your future, your children, your wealth or your life, and being often at just as much risk as the men.

I have been working my way through the Tudor and Lancaster/Plantagenet novels for some years now. I have switched sides in the ongoing struggle as often as Gregory has, and while I do not like all of these people, I feel they are real in her hands and require us to consider that history is, at its base, the story of people, of their lives, and of what happens to them, and to them alone. show less