Book news on Philippa Gregory's latest

I’ve just discovered that Philippa Gregory, author of the bestselling The Other Boleyn Girl, is coming out with a new novel in September. The book is called The Other Queen (it’s tough to keep Gregory’s book titles straight, considering they’re all very similar), and it’s about Mary, Queen of Scots and her imprisonment in England. Mary's quite an interesting historical figure, and one of the most misunderstood (she was implicated in the death of her second husband, Henry, Lord Darnley, and was eventually thought to be unfit to rule. Actually, she was a good person who made an appalling number of bad decisions, as evidenced in Alison Weir's excellent book about the murder of Lord Darnley). The cover not withstanding (it looks as though it could be the cover for a science fiction/fantasy novel)., I always love Philippa Gregory’s books because of the way she expertly takes the lives of well-known historical figures and makes them into "real" people. The Other Queen will be a treat for me.

Comments

Booklogged said…

I look forward to learning more about Mary, Queen of Scots. I've enjoyed her other books on the royalty.

April 6, 2008 at 12:45 AM

Dewey said…

I can see how the cover could look like a fantasy novel, but it also has a romance flair about it, at least to me. I'm looking forward to it, too, since she always manages to write about people in history that I'm already interested in!

April 7, 2008 at 4:03 PM

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...

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