Skip to main content

Review--Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, by Alison Weir


Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, by Alison Weir, is a absorbing look into the life of one of Europe’s most intriguing queens. Born in Aquitaine, she was married off to King Louis of France. Her marriage to him was annulled, and Eleanor married King Henry II of England. She then became mother to two kings of England. What emerges from this book is an in-depth look at not only the life of this queen, but insight into the world of the laste-12th century. Eleanor of Aquitaine was a truly remarkable and unusual woman, having had more power than other women of the period and having had a dynamic personality.

It turns out that, despite her notoriety, not much is truly known about Eleanor (in fact, there exists not even an accurate painting or sculpture of her, and some periods of her life are unaccounted for), but Weir does an amazing job in this biography of putting the pieces together. I hadn’t known much about the life of this fascinating queen before reading this book, but I learned a lot and was thoroughly entertained by the way in which the author portrayed the period. Weir is first-rate in the historical accuracy department, so that’s why I keep returning again and again to her nonfiction. There’s also a certain sense of storytelling she has that makes her books be more than simply a recitation of facts, which makes Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life highly readable.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m