Customer Reviews

Amenable Women

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Mavis Cheek's "Amenable Women" is told in two voices, current-day widow Flora Chapman and Henry VIII's discarded fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The book is a wonderful combination of contemporary life with historical fiction. Flora has recently been widowed from her larger-than-life husband, Edward, who takes up all the space and life in their marriage. The only child, Hilary, is her father's clone and is not close to her mother, who has stepped back early in Hilary's life to let Edward do the parenting. Edward and Hilary's "circle of two" rarely expanded to include Flora. After Edward's untimely death in a bizarre ballooning accident, where he manages to die by burning, blunt force trauma, AND drowning, certain secrets come out about Edward, threatening his standing in the small English village Flora and he have lived for thirty years and have raised their daughter. Flora opens the book with her thoughts and memories as she stands at the edge of her husband's grave, listening and occasionally participating in the funeral service. She realises what many widows from dull marriages realise, she's really better off without him. She sees the vain, foolish, headstrong man that her daughter cannot.

While going through Edward's belongings, she comes across a manuscript he has been writing in his pretentious manner about their village. There's a connection with Anne of Cleves that Flora finds, as a stone in a fence in their yard was found dedicated to Anna. Flora becomes interested in Henry's fourth wife - known throughout history as the "Flanders Mare" because of her plain looks - and begins to research her life. During the research, including a trip to Paris to see Hans Holbein's famous portrait of Anna, she realises that she could be Anna's sister. Both plain women, Flora and Anna largely succeed in life - and make reasonably happy lives for themselves - in spite, or maybe because of, their plainness.

The other voices in the book are those of Anna, Elizabeth, and Mary, speaking from their portraits. In those parts of the book, Cheek gives her readers some historical context to religious, social, and cultural events of the 16th century.

Cheek is an excellent writer. She makes transitions of 500 years seem easy. It's the story of two women who come together in the end to understand themselves and many of their loved ones.