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194 of 197 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the perfect winter night's read, December 13, 2006
Philippa Gregory continues to entertain and beguile with this latest entry to her Tudor-era historical novels, "The Boleyn Inheritance." This time around, she focuses on the tumultuous events that take place (1539-1542) following Jane Seymour's death in childbed, when Henry VIII decides to marry again, only this time he has decided to make a political alliance with the Protestant kingdom of Cleves in order to check the threatening Catholic alliance of France and Spain. "The Boleyn Inheritance" concentrates on what occurs because of this decision, as seen through the eyes of three of the women most effected by the events -- Anne of Cleves, the Protestant princess that Henry marries; Katherine Howard, the vivacious and lively young English beauty that Henry falls for; and Jane Boleyn, the widow of George Boleyn, whose testimony sent her husband and her infamous sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, to the execution block. Believe me, if you're in on the lookout for a well written and absorbing page turner, "The Boleyn Inheritance" will definitely satisfy.
In 1539, Anne of Cleves, prepares herself for marriage to one of the most powerful men in Europe, Henry VIII of England, who has already been married three times -- once to Catherine of Aragon, whom he divorced and broke from the Catholic Church in order to marry the tempestuous and beguiling Anne Boleyn, whom he later beheaded on the suspicion that she was playing him false, and lastly to Jane Seymour who gave him the son he so devoutly wished for before expiring herself. It is not exactly the kind of marriage that most princesses would dream of, but then Anne's situation at home is hardly an ideal one. How was Anne to know that she had exchanged the firing pan for the fire? For once in England, she finds herself alone, without a proper understanding of the English language or the customs; and worse, that her new husband, Henry, dislikes her at first sight, and immediately makes his disdain known. It also soon becomes evident that Henry has taken a liking to one of her ladies in-waiting, the beautiful and vivacious Katherine Howard, and that the old monster is looking for a way out of his unwanted marriage to Anne. Has Anne come all the way to England only to face the threat of the axe like the previous Queen Anne? With few friends, and practically no one to rely on, Anne will need all her wits and a lot of luck in order to keep her neck and her good name intact...
Philippa Gregory doesn't exactly cover new ground here -- "The Boleyn Inheritance" covers much of the same ground that many casual historians are familiar with. What a brilliant idea then to make one of the chief protagonists of this novel, Jane Boleyn, a woman who has been reviled for her part in sending her husband and her sister-in-law to the execution block! And what a good notion it was to show all the backroom intrigues of the Duke of Norfolk, et al in their quest for the upper hand as seen through Jane's eyes. It added an air of immediacy, danger and poignancy that might have otherwise been absent if we'd been left with a one person point-of-view. The plotting was well done -- even and with a sense of continuity that made for smooth reading, and the juxtaposition of the three narratives was not jarring at all. Also brilliantly done was the character portrayals of the three women and of the monstrous Henry. I'll admit to being quite partial to Anne of Cleves, and so was really pleased that Philippa Gregory portrayed her as possessing courage, tenacity and intelligence. I also appreciated the author's portrayal of the heedless, pleasure seeking Katherine Howard, and surprisingly enough, found myself feeling for Jane Boleyn, and appreciating her ability to navigate the treacherous court she so ardently wanted to be part of. In all, this was a well written, very fast paced and tightly constructed novel that was a joy to read from beginning to end. Just the thing for a good winter night's read.
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81 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rather a disappointment, August 7, 2007
Having not merely read but absolutely DEVOURED The Other Boleyn Girl, I was eager to read more from Ms. Gregory, and I decided to go in chronological order by history, rather than publication order. Thus, this book came next.
I suppose it's fair to say that I liked "The Other Boleyn Girl" so much that in all honesty, anything coming after it would have little chance of living up to my massive expectations. I wanted another book that both informed and transported me, another invigorating read that made me forget the world around me and sucked me into a world I had scarcely ever imagined. But unfortunately, that simply never happened with this second foray into Ms. Gregory's meticulously researched world. Throughout this book, I was never able to lose sight of the fact that I was reading about people Ms. Gregory never actually knew personally. I never had that feeling reading "The Other Boleyn Girl". In that book, she always made me feel as if I was reading about real, living, breathing people -- not just historical figures being recreated on a page.
In Gregory's defense, there is not a lot known about the private lives of the three women she tries so hard to bring to life here. (She explains as much in author's note at the end of the book, in a move a more cynical reader might call covering her rear end.) So she had little to draw on, and perhaps she should not be faulted if her characters come off as a little flat, simply because she was unwilling to substitute juicier details for scant facts. However, it must be said that she compounds the problem by splitting her narrative into three parts. Instead of giving us a full, rich portrait of one woman, she chooses to give us a pale sketch of three.
The first woman is Anne of Cleves, King Henry VIII's fourth wife, and the first one who managed to outlive him. She comes from Lutheran Germany as part of an arranged marriage and a package deal -- her hand in holy matrimony for her brother, the Duke of Cleves' word that he'll align with Henry against his Papist enemies. Unfortunately for Anne, she has two strikes against her before her marriage can even begin. For one thing, as soon as Henry meets her, he decides that he doesn't like her. Ms. Gregory's imagining of what went wrong during this first meeting to engender such instant spite from the King is ingenious, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that what she imagined is pretty close to what actually happened. Second, the great nations of France, Spain and England at that time were like schoolgirls on a playground in the way they constantly changed allegiances and teamed up against one another. In the month or so it took Anne to get from Germany to England, many of Henry's advisors had already convinced him that he no longer needed the partnership with Cleves. Her marriage to Henry lasted barely six months, so a book solely about her would have been a slim volume indeed. She starts off as a fairly interesting character, but after she loses Queenship Anne's narrative becomes dull, and most of her passages are obviously just breaks from the actual story that's happening with the second Queen Katherine, at court.
Katherine Howard is one of the weaker elements of the book. She's a paper-thin creation, characterized only by youth, beauty and simplicity of mind. Unsurprisingly, this gets very repetitive very quickly. She is guided by her uncle, the same sinister Duke of Norfolk who stood as a shadowy, controlling figure in "The Other Boleyn Girl". Unfortunately, his appearances in this book lack the same threat and menace that he had before, and even he stands diminished in this new tome. Also diminished is the character of King Henry VIII himself. In "The Other Boleyn Girl", I understood him more as a person, and could clearly see his motivations through the eyes and actions of the characters around him. In this book, the people around him simply settle for constantly referring to him as "mad" or "a monster", and little explanation is given for how exactly he got that way, except for old age and the wound in his leg.
The most diminished of all, however, is Jane Boleyn. When she chose to make Jane a protagonist and tried to humanize her, Ms. Gregory took a humongous risk, and I do not believe that it paid off. When she's not busy trying to lead yet another queen to the scaffold, she endlessly moans about her lost husband -- a man SHE helped condemn to death in the first place. Reading her endless whining and moping about how much she loved George and Anne Boleyn highlights one of the books most dismaying flaws: its repetitiveness. The characters repeat the same things over and over again, sometimes within the same paragraph! As the book goes on (and on) it becomes more and more painfully obvious that it's been deliberately fluffed up with filler, since there was so little content to be had here. I wish Ms. Gregory and her editors had simply settled for having a shorter book. After all, there's no rule that says your book will be taken less seriously if it's less than 400 pages, is there? Let's hope not -- the repetion was so bad that in some places, I honestly started to think that maybe Phillippa Gregory didn't write this entire book.
On the whole, I wasn't SO disappointed with this book that I'll stop reading Ms. Gregory's books, but I have to admit that I've lowered her pedastal a few feet. And I'll keep reading the other books in this series in hopes that at least one other will match the brilliance of "The Other Boleyn Girl".
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64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling tale of two wives, December 8, 2006
I'm always up for another round with Henry VIII and his wives, so I put myself on the library waiting list for The Boleyn Inheritance.
And I'm pleased to report that I enjoyed it immensely.
The Boleyn Inheritance is told by Jane, Lady Rochford, widow of the executed George Boleyn; Anne of Cleves; and Katherine "Kitty" Howard. Jane, self-justifying and self-deceiving, is obsessed with her past yet determined to do whatever she has to do in order to restore her life to its former glamour. Anne, no stupid Flanders mare but a sensible, honorable young woman who longs for freedom and respect, finds that she has exchanged the humiliations of her brother's court for the reign of terror of Henry's. Kitty is an airheaded teenager, with an endless capacity to push aside unpleasant realities in favor of her more satisfying interests: young men, jewels, and pretty clothes. Manipulating Jane and Kitty is the sinister Duke of Norfolk, and stalking through all three women's lives is the unpredictable, increasingly tyrannical Henry VIII.
Gregory juggles the heroines' stories masterfully. Even when Anne of Cleves is relegated to the background and the machinations of the Duke of Norfolk and Jane take center stage, Anne remains to comment on what she sees around her. She, the outsider, becomes both the moral center of the novel and the narrator on which the reader can most rely for an accurate perception of events. Kitty's adolescent preoccupations and mercurial character are captured wonderfully, while Jane, morally repulsive as she is, has a normalcy about her that keeps us reading her story and wondering at her motivations.
There's a certain humor here, often quite dark, that was missing altogether in the very earnest Constant Princess. Much of this comes from Kitty's youthful blatherings ("France would be wonderful, except I cannot speak French, or at any rate only "voila!" but surely they must mostly all speak English? And if not, then they can learn?"), but the more cynical Jane Rochford contributes some memorable lines: "If she declares herself Dereham's wife, then she has not then cuckolded the king but only Dereham; and since his head is on London Bridge, he is in no position to complain."
And neither am I. Read this one.
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