Great Maria

At the risk of admitting that I am the sort of person who is pleasantly surprised to discover water is wet despite going for a swim once every week or so, it is gratifying to discover, once more, how unromantic a romantic historical novel can be. Great Maria, of all of Cecelia Hollands' novels I've read this far, is certainly the most romantic of her books. Love and the relationship between a man and a woman plays a central role, and it's the first of her books to feature a female protagonist. It is also, incidentally, twice as long as everything else I've read by her.

Being a Holland novel, no-one gets off lightly. Maria's life is charted from her prepubescent innocence to her wily middle age. The daughter of a powerful Norman show more robber-knight in southern Italy in the early 11th century, she is married off to one of his more ambitious men, Richard (despite her own preference for Richard's younger brother, Roger.) When her father decides that Richard is getting a bit too big for his britches, his plan to kill him fails and Richard takes ownership of his castle and lands. Richard's ambitions are to rise above the role of thief, and he sets out to carve out his own place in the world.

Maria never questions her subservient role in this world. She doesn't long to be a knight or agitate for voting rights or rail against the closed medieval mind. Hers is a medieval mind. When her husband beats her, she doesn't like it or even love him for it, but she has to accept there's nothing she can do about it and her fate is tied to his. Gradually she comes into her own, prescribed, female role, often bringing Richard's violent wrath down on herself, sometimes because she is foolish, sometimes because she is clever, always because she is headstrong. Risking his temper is a thing she is prepared to do to get her way. Nonetheless, he grows to rely on her and her attraction to him is as much physical as it is anything else.

She has babies, not all of whom survive, and they grow, and Richard extends his conquests and his power, and there is danger and intrigues and violence and tempestuous scenes and passionate... stuff and eavesdropping and betrayals, all told in Hollands crisp, plain, practical style that makes no apologies for characters that are compelling and multi-faceted and sympathetic even with their monstrous faults, such as domestic abuse and murder. show less

Much ado about nothing. Love Holland's work, but this one lacked any real drama beyond some lite romance. Shame, because Norman-era Sicily deserves a great historical fiction novel and I thought Holland would be able to pull it off.

Cecelia Holland's writing tends to be scrubbed clean of emotions, perhaps reflecting the psychopathically violent historical periods she writes about. Neverthless, her protagonists' determination to gain control over their own lives and destinies often amounts to a kind of passion, and the intelligence with which they go about it can be rivetingly interesting. Her novels are so meticulously researched, reading them can be a form of time travel. Great Maria is perhaps the best of her novels, and back in print.

I've posted a longer review at my Historical Novels website, www.HistoricalNovels.info

Having read Jerusalem, I was eager to read Great Maria, a novel set in Sicily in the middle ages. Maria is the daughter of a robber baron, compelled to marry Richard, brother of Roger, the man she really loves.

I wanted to like this book, I really did, but the author’s writing style kept bogging me down. She writes in short choppy sentences that are hard to follow at times, and I found myself skipping and skimming in many places. Maybe it’s me, but I thought that the writing style of this book was a lot different from that which Holland used in Jerusalem—it may be intentional I don’t know. Holland describes everything in minute detail, sometimes to the detriment of the story. It’s a pity, because the details of Maria’s life show more are interesting in places and give the reader a generally good feel for the life of an average woman in the middle ages. At the same time, though, the author doesn’t do a very good job of describing her location: her novel could be taking place anywhere. It’s kind of like not seeing the forest for the trees, in a way.

Maria is a believable heroine for the time period, but the author’s detached attitude to her heroine never really made me feel close to her. I loved the premise of the book, but the execution of the book left me wanting more. It’s a pity, because I’ve enjoyed Holland’s writing in the past. show less

The one LT review describes the author's writing style as "scrubbed clean of emotions". An apt description. So much scrubbed that to me it's choppy and completely lacking in any sort of flow. Almost like listening to an excited 5 year old tell you a story. Each paragraph seems unattached to the previous one. I was enjoying the story but gave up about half way through.

This is probably my favourite medieval historical novel ever for its excellent period sense. I think she manages to convey the feeling of being a woman in that period pretty much spot on. Recently re-read it.

Makes other historical fiction look like fluff. I especially enjoyed Maria's growth as a deeply religious woman learning to accept the Muslims.