Portrait of an Unknown Woman [Import] [Paperback]

Vanora Bennett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007224931
• ISBN-13: 978-0007224937
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,363,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been writing historical novels for the past four or five years, and those years have definitely been the best time of my life.

Before that I was a foreign correspondent, working for the Los Angeles Times and Reuters and finally The Times of London in a series of far-flung places from Europe to Asia to Africa to the former Soviet Union. My Russian friends used to joke that as I got more experienced, I was forever being sent to riskier places. It was hugely thought-provoking, and also tremendous fun, in some ways, but with time I began to long to go home.

Writing about the past - yet another foreign country, to paraphrase LP Hartley - turned out to be the way. Who knew, back then, that hanging out in the London Library, reading books over the noise of kiddy computer football games at home, and getting the manuscript in on time, would come to seem every bit as thrilling as those scary taxi rides I used to take in and out of war zones?

Yet I think my books still reflect that earlier period of conflict reporting. My first novel, for instance, is about Thomas More's family of diehard Catholics, at the time Henry VIII was turning England Protestant, and although it has a very fictional love triangle and an art-history conundrum in its foreground, the background of religious conflict, arrests, secret police, and torture and execution for your beliefs all felt very real to me too.

I don't think it makes much difference whether these sorts of big, and often terrifying public events, are situated in the present or in the past - they've always cast the same long shadow over individual lives. The only difference is that more of us in the West lead more cushioned lives today, while, in the past, you were likelier to be caught up in whatever the troubles of the times were. To me, part of the pleasure of writing the books I write now is to make some kind of literary sense, a pattern, out of some of the terrible things I witnessed before - to try and understand how love, loyalty, friendship and quiet decency can, sometimes, help individuals come through, even those caught up in the larger-scale horror of war and conflict.

The four novels I've written so far have gone back in time from Henry VIII (the Middle Ages being a particularly rich source of turbulent history). I've skipped back half a century or so at a time. My fourth novel deals with the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, back in the 14th century, at the time of the English Peasants' Revolt.

But I'm now regrouping ... and think it's time to move forward through time again. Maybe even to somewhere around the time of the Russian Revolution, which would let me bring into my writing some of the other things I learned on my travels!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars The narrator's voice ruined this book, July 23, 2009

By 

Medusa - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Portrait of an Unknown Woman: A Novel (Audio CD)

Josephine Bailey speaks in such a monotone that I've avoided buying several books on CD because she's the narrator. I'm fascinated w/the reign of Henry VIII and historical fiction of that time period should make good listening. I thought that I would learn more about Thomas More and I did somewhat but I had difficulty listening for any length of time and had to keep turning the CD player off, thereby ruining momentum and continuity. This should have been a good blend of history and drama. Instead I found that I didn't like any of the characters and didn't care a whit about what happened to any of them. I will listen again perhaps after enjoying a glass of wine to mellow me in preparation for this woman's booooring voice.

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of an Unknown woman, November 7, 2008

By 

Ronni Ann Lee Jones - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portrait of an Unknown Woman: A Novel (Audio CD)

Excellent mix of Fiction and history! Edge of your seat listening. I felt transported back to the 1500's and King Henry the VIII's court. Meg Giggs becomes as real as well researched historical back round. 15 hours - I found it difficult to turn off the cd's. This one has it all - Intrigue, history, romance, imagination and taste.