The Other Queen
Publisher:
Touchstone
Publication Date:
16 September, 2008
ISBN:
9781416549123
Pages:
448
Subjects:
Historical, Biographical
Available as:
Trade Cloth, 978-1-4165-4912-3
Trade Paper, 978-1-4165-4914-7
Trade Paper, 978-1-59413-343-5
E-Book - Epublication content package, 978-1-4391-2666-0
Audio Recording Downloadable, 978-1-4356-7528-5
Description:
Now in paperback from “the queen of royal fiction” (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory— a unique novel about the intriguing, romantic, and maddening mary Queen of scots.
For years Philippa Gregory’s readers have been asking her to write a novel about Mary Queen of Scots—a request she now fulfills with a tale as engrossing as any she has ever written. A heroine everyone recognizes but few truly know, Mary Queen of Scots is remembered mostly for her death on the scaffold than for her turbulent, romantic life. In The Other Queen, Philippa Gregory resurrects Mary and her world by way of a chapter from her life that is all but forgotten: Mary’s long imprisonment as a “guest” of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick. With the earl and his wife, whose fortune and marriage are jeopardized by the extraordinary woman under their charge, Gregory has found the perfect means for understanding Mary herself, a queen who will lie, seduce, plot, and sacrifice the lives of thousands in her quest to regain her Scots throne—and to take over Queen Elizabeth’s.
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PW Publishers Weekly
Review Source:
Publishers Weekly
Review Date:
2008-05-05
Copyright:
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
In her latest foray into the lives and minds of Elizabethan shakers and movers, Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl) takes on Mary Queen of Scots during her 16-year house arrest. By the secret order of her cousin, Elizabeth I, Mary is held at the estate of George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Bess of Hardwick; the latter three share first-person narrative duties. The book centers on Mary's never-ending clandestine efforts to drum up enough support to take her cousin's throne, but the real story is in the clash of two women and the earl who stands between them. Shrewsbury's refusal to recognize superior intelligence and force of will in his wife, who runs the estate, and in Mary, who tries to make him her instrument at every turn, makes for one delicious conflict after another. The voices are strong throughout, but Gregory's ventriloquism is at its best with Bess of Hardwick, a woman who managed to throw off the restrictions of birth, class and sex in order to achieve things that proved beyond her titled husband. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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