Crown Publishers

Queen Hereafter: A Novel of Margaret of Scotland

mandy — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:00:00 +0000

In days of yore, the bards were a respected and integral part of the English and Scottish courts because of their ability to recount tales of recent and past glories through their gift for musical storytelling. In Queen Hereafter, Susan Fraser King tells the grand and sweeping story of a young English princess who found refuge alongside her family—including her brother the rebel prince Edgar who was fighting for the crown of England—under the protection of Warrior-King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland. Princess Margaret was pious, willful, educated, and raised to be a queen, but wanted nothing more than to become a nun and worship God in a monastery. However, this was not to be her fate.

King Malcolm had lost his first wife and, looking for a wife of royal blood, asks for Margaret’s hand in marriage. Margaret reluctantly agrees to the arrangement to ensure protection of her brother, mother, and sister. Eventually, the reluctant young queen wins over the hearts and minds of the Scots because of her piety, intelligence, charity, and the kindness she bestows upon her adopted people and land. To this day, Margaret, whose reign ended in the eleventh century, is honored as Scotland’s only royal saint who brought Scotland into the medieval age.

In this fascinating and impeccably researched re-imagining of the early years of Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm, Margaret begins to put her stamp on the royal court almost immediately. She brings Malcolm’s castles up to her cosmopolitan standards with his grudging approval; she advocates for giving alms in the form of food and coinage for the poor in the kingdom, including her dispossessed and homeless Saxon countrymen who are streaming into Scotland after numerous skirmishes with the Norman supporters of King William. She also talks her husband into providing daily meals for young orphans who she sometimes feeds with her own hand.

The novel is narrated through the voice of the young Queen Margaret and Eva, a beautiful and gifted bard (and granddaughter of Lady Macbeth) who refuses to relinquish control of the Northern territories of Scotland to King Malcolm. The illegitimate daughter of the deposed King Lulach, Eva is sent to Malcolm’s court as a royal hostage and spy for Lady Macbeth. Margaret asks Eva to accompany her as she devoutly prays and asks for forgiveness for her sins at all hours of the day and night. Eva becomes friends with Margaret and has a bird’s eye view of the young queen’s challenges and triumphs in this captivating and somewhat forbidding land. She eventually comes to love and respect the earnest, young, and beautiful queen, but is conflicted by her dual loyalties to Lady Macbeth and Queen Margaret.

In her author’s notes, Fraser King admits to taking some liberties with her recounting of this story, including the character of Eva, but she says that Margaret’s life is well documented by Margaret’s personal confessor, Bishop Turgot, prior of Durham, who wrote about Queen Margaret in a laudatory manner that is typical of the era, but also because the process for Margaret’s sainthood had already been initiated. In contrast, Fraser King’s Margaret is both saintly and flawed. In an interview, the author describes Margaret as “charitable and compassionate and loving, but strict with her own children who became strong land influential leaders. Yet she was terribly hard on herself, starving her body into what was probably anorexia, while praying constantly and always finding herself wanting no matter her accomplishments.”

If you’re a lover of riveting stories and historical fiction from this era, as I am, Queen Hereafter will not disappoint.

Written by: Gita Tewari, December 20th 2010

The King’s Mistress

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Emma Campion

Crown Publishers

I’ve always had a special affinity for historical fiction, more specifically, historical fiction about the English courts of medieval times. As someone who has never excelled in the complex maneuverings of office politics, I find the level of intrigue and skulduggery that existed then alternately fascinating and mind boggling. The stakes were pretty high; if you found yourself on the wrong side of history, you could end up imprisoned in the tower of London, or worse still, with your head dangling on a pike for all to see.

Until I signed on to review The King’s Mistress for the virtual book tour, I was unaware that Alice Perrers is one of the most despised villains in British history. Perrers has been reviled by her peers and scholars alike—characterized as a woman who used her beauty, sensuality, and cunning to take advantage of an aging king for her own material and political gain. Described as the world’s leading authority on Alice Perrers, Compton has set about revealing the truth of the matter with a fascinating text that both rehabilitates and humanizes her.

It’s no secret that the combination of intelligence, erotic allure, and beauty is a dangerous mix for women, and throughout history these women have both fascinated and repelled us as far back as Eve. Because this novel falls in the genre of historical fiction, Campion admits in her author’s notes to taking some liberties with the facts to breathe new life into Perrer’s story, but much of this voluminous novel comes from her extensive research on Perrer’s life and times.

When we first meet Alice, she is fourteen, and her beauty is already in full bloom. Her mother, an aging and discontented beauty, seems to view Alice as competition, yet resents her father’s decision to betroth Alice to a charismatic, wealthy merchant twenty years her senior. Alice fears leaving the comfort and safety of her family, but is excited to embark on this new chapter in her life. What she doesn’t realize is that her husband is withholding secrets that she will only discover once she is enmeshed in her own web of intrigue.

Suffice it to say, Compton’s sympathetic rendering of Perrer’s story presents her as a woman who finds herself in circumstances beyond her control, and forced to use her attributes to survive in a world where a person who appears to be your ally one day could turn out to be your enemy the next. Emma Campion has reimagined history into “herstory” in this beautifully written, riveting novel.

Written by: Gita Tewari, July 26th 2010

A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:22:00 +0000

By Dana Canedy

Crown Publishers

I can’t remember the last time I cried after reading a book. After reading the last page of A Journal for Jordan I suddenly found myself bawling my eyes out. But enough about me—this is a book review after all.

Based on the title of this book, I expected it to be a journal written by a loved one for a loved one. I was aware that the fiancée of a fallen soldier, who also happens to be a New York Times senior editor and Pulitzer Prize winner, had encouraged her fiancée to start a journal for his infant son after learning about his impending deployment to Iraq. I expected a touching book filled with words of wisdom about life lessons learned. This book is that and much more. In it, Canedy tells the story of an unlikely romance between herself, an independent NYT reporter, and First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, a decorated military officer and gentle soul. The book also includes life lessons and inspiration in the form of King’s journal entries and letters.

Canedy came to the writing of this book from her own improbable journey. An army brat who had seen the toll that military life took on her parents’ marriage, she was determined not to marry a military man as her mother had, and worked her way up the ranks from cub reporter to New York Times editor. While nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego after a demoralizing breakup, Canedy finds herself at her parents house on Father’s Day trying to patch up her tenuous relationship with her father, and meets the man who will be the love of her life.

This is a love story of two individuals who couldn’t be more dissimilar and Canedy charts the up and down course of their relationship with humor and honesty. I especially found her anecdotes about King’s old-fashioned courtliness endearing such as his first visit to New York City:

"It occurred to me that perhaps he was the sort of man who still believed in the dating rituals of a bygone era. I was right. The entire weekend, Charles insisted on being on the curbside of the sidewalk to put distance between me and the traffic. It was a sweet throwback gesture that in any other city I would have appreciated, but it drove me crazy as we tried to keep pace with the pedestrian traffic on New York’s one-way streets…"

By the end of the book, Canedy is a single mother raising a small child and struggling with the reality of a life and a future without King. We travel with her as she navigates her new life as an army widow and mother. She tells in wrenching detail about meeting other military families of fallen soldiers at a memorial service, and her commitment to giving her son a sense of the father that he never knew. It seems fitting to end this review with a passage from a letter that King wrote to Canedy on the plane back to Iraq:

"It takes a special kind of woman to be married to a soldier. He’s always going on deployment or training, missing births, birthdays, and any kind of special occasion you can imagine. You really have to be a self-motivated and strong-willed person. You spend a lot of time alone because he’s gone. It’s a tough job being a military spouse. Though we’ve had our difference, you have always been there for me. Thank you."

Written by: Gita Tewari, March 11th 2009

The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes

admin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:41:00 +0000

By Tess Uriza Holthe

Crown Publishers

No point beating about the bush. Might as well get the finale over with right now at the top, instead of coyly building to it with flourishes of logic and neat exempla. Here goes.

This is one terrific book Tess Uriza Holthe has written. It's tough, slapstick, delicate, witty, bawdy, rueful and superbly crafted. One minute she throws her head back in laughter; the next she whips out a blade and knifes you in the ribs. Can't trust her at all, meaning she's the best sort of writer. There are lots of good characters, too, women and men: a Scots enforcer, three widows all once married to the same man, a band of gypsy pickpockets, a hard ex-con who finds happiness with a street urchin and vice versa, a Jewish mother and son, a master lace maker, a snoopy wife who suffers migraines, a young French woman who marries a rich good-hearted American only to discover that he's mentally ill and drug-addicted. These characters are unusual and engrossing, including the not-so-likable ones. In fact, now I think of it, most of the good ones aren't so good all the way around, and the bad ones aren't so bad all the way around - which is to say that they have dimension and are recognizably human.

However hard the surfaces are sometimes, and they do get hard, there are knots of love in these stories. But this ain't chick lit. No way. Rakish heroes and heaving bosoms do not abound in Holthe's worlds. She's too Annie Oakley smart. Miss Sure Shot, you know. Can throw a dozen glass balls in the air and get 'em all before they hit the ground. That good. A champ. And the dust jacket design is very nice, too, by the bye, and useful to see the locations, which are mostly the Italian and French Rivieras, the Côte d'Azur. So, to put the conclusion before the facts: I highly suggest you pedal your Schwinn to an independent bookstore and buy this collection of interrelated short fictions by Holthe. Read it. Savor it. Dig it. You'll be glad you plunked down your bucks. You'll be advising your friends to do the same.

So now that's clear, time for some convincing details. How about this fine, calm image of the exterior of a wealthy château in Cannes that the protagonist, Claudette, comes back to after a few years' absence in the U.S.:

The château is heartbreakingly beautiful in the soft twilight. Mauve and rose light upon the clay-colored exterior and black wrought-iron railing...Blue cornflowers and red poppies rustling in the warm breeze. Cypress and plane trees leaning in to shade the house. Ivy climbing alongside magenta bougainvillea. Two small red birds flutter and hop on the faded red-tiled roof, craning necks down, small jerks of their heads as they listen to her fumble for the copper skeleton key…

And those two birds!

Or how about this, a nice contrast, in which Clara thinks Alberto, the man she has just intentionally knocked into the bushes, is a thief, and confronts him. He will become her husband, of course.

[S]ince she was certain Alberto was a thief, albeit a good-looking one, ...she said, "You can stuff your hand up a pig's behind, you pig!" He blinked. "A pig's behind?" But she had called him a pig. Did she then mean for him to stick his hand up his own behind?

The superbly crafted aspect of these stories turns up in their interrelations, not only in the excellent, concise writing. A character who is the protagonist in one story will turn up as a minor character in the next. Three typical, young, American male tourists pass through a couple of stories. That street urchin links the Scots heavy to the ex-con. The gypsy pickpockets have two stories, but figure prominently in a third, the one in which the rich American meets his unkind fate. And so on.

A different facet of Holthe's craft is on display in the bashing but comic story "The Bruiser." She takes a big chance in this story with her Scots protagonist, Colin Fergusen. He's not exactly your typical enforcer: He likes yoga and aromatherapy, can't get a Ricky Nelson tune out of his head and admires American advertising. But even more, when he speaks or thinks, it's in the brogue of his country. Like this:

In America ye couldnay smoke in certain public places. That's what he heard telt. Nay joke. Imagine that. People claiming the air around ye. He'd never make it there. He inhaled deeply and let the smoke oot through his nostrils. Worked like a charm in calming yer nerves. If he couldnay had a smoke at will he'd be a goner.

Hoot mon, dialects are tricky. Some readers will turn off if it's not done perfectly. Well, Holthe not only pulls it off for Colin's speech and his interior monologues, she also has some fun by making the omniscient narrator's voice in brogue as well. Note above, for example, "He inhaled deeply and let the smoke oot through his nostrils." A sight quibble in this matter, though: To me, "yin" does not equal Scots for "one," and so every time this word appears it's a minor distraction.

Is every story equally good, then? Almost, but not quite. "Weightless," about a young American woman who steps into an affair with an Italian fisherman who is having an affair with his brother's wife, goes on too long. And it also seems not very well borrowed from a Henry James American-innocent-abroad-in-Europe narrative.

Nonetheless, she's a sly, funny coyote, Holthe is, when she tells her tales. And most of them, BTW, do not have little, pink bows at the end. Whew. Thank goodness. Just like life.

Okay, that's it. Enough. End of review. Go to your independent bookstore; buy a copy of The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes. You'll be glad you did, but I already said that, didn't I?

Written by: Neil Flowers, July 29th 2007

The Secret Magdalene

admin — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 18:07:00 +0000

By Ki Longfellow

Crown Publishers

Although the daughter of a privileged affluent Jewish aristocrat, Mariamne is unable to overtly display her love of learning as females do not obtain a formal education. Thus, she secretly studies whatever she, her personal slave, Tata, or her father’s ward, Salome, can borrow books without anyone knowing. After becoming ill, she began hearing voices in her head that she assumed were prophecies even as she fully recovers from her ailment. When her father catches Salome alone with a young male guest and no escort, he becomes irate and tosses her out with nothing except the clothes that she is wearing. Though he has no evidence of violation except a nebulous guilt by association, he also accuses his daughter of the same outrageous behavior and exiles her to his brother-in-law’s house with an admonishment to never see Salome again. Instead Mariamne and Salome, dressed as men, run off to Alexandria, where they study in the library. Eventually Salome meets John the Baptizer while Mariamne finds herself attracted to Yeshu. The latter two share a love and the premonition of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Providing a female perspective to the birth, death and rebirth of Jesus, readers see a unique viewpoint from that of The Secret Magdalene. Mariamne and Salome are terrific protagonists, who, aside from a retelling of the major events in Jesus’ life, enable the audience to obtain a look at the restricted lifestyle of even a wealthy female in the Holy Land. Though the action is limited, readers who want to a wider feminist glimpse of the last days will want to read Ki Longfellow’s fascinating biblical tale.

Written by: Harriet Klausner, January 1st 2007