Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The Sunne in Splendour

We were reading Romeo and Juliet, not Richard III, but Sr. Maureen Christi told us that we can't trust Shakespeare's depiction of Richard because he wrote to please his politically savvy patron, Elizabeth. Granddaughter of Richard's deposer, she'd want popular culture to enhance, not diminish, her sometimes questioned reign.  Maybe Sr. Christi had read the recently published The Sunne in Splendour when she told us Richard III probably wasn't quite the villain he'd been made out to be although I doubt it (she said she never read anything unless it had been written at least 20 years earlier, to be sure it was enduring and therefore literature). Still, I wonder, because in 1982 Richard had not yet started the rehabilitation project that tells us now he was a skilled commander with moderate scoliosis who ended up buried under a car park.

Sharon Kay Penman's book wasn't the fist to portray Richard III sympathetically, but unlike Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, she covers Richard's life from age 8, not just his reign and the question of nephews' deaths.  We first meet Richard as a boy awed by his charismatic brother Edward (and we first meet Edward seducing Richard's pretty, red-haired nurse). Sons of the Duke of York, they're on one side of the confusing Wars of the Roses, battling the addled Henry VI and his tactical skilled wife, Margarita of Anjou. She's fighting for her son, the Yorks are fighting for a crown they believe should be theirs, and the Duke of Warwick is fighting for himself.

After an exile forced by Lancaster's victories and the deaths of his father and brother Edmund, Richard comes of age in the glare of his brother Edward's reign.  Ned takes the Sunne in Splendour as his badge after an atmospheric refraction makes it appear there are three suns at the climax of his crown-winning battle, in which Richard shows his tactical skills. He also falls in love with Warwick's daughter, a love apparently thwarted when Warwick switches sides, along with Ned's and Dickon's middle brother, George, Duke of Clarence. (If this seems confusing, it is.  I recommend keeping a genealogy chart and chronology open while reading about the Wars of the Roses). Warwick marries Anne to Henry VI's son Edward, then loses to Ned after George switches sides again. Despite attempted interventions from George and from Ned's Queen, Katherine Woodville, Richard and Anne marry.

Their marriage is happy (as with her Welsh trilogy, Penman skillfully welds romance and medieval warfare and politics), but times are not. York and Lancaster both district the Queen's relatives, and the Queen herself. Katherine Woodville comes across as a scheming, calculating, power-hungry social climber - totally unsympathetic and completely compelling. I wonder how much of this portrayal, taken from the historical record, is accurate and how much is public scorn for forceful women. Her political machinations come to the forefront towards the end of the book, after Ned has burned himself out with his excesses.  She, her brothers, and her sons by her marriage to Lord Grey scheme to take the regency of her son Edward V from Richard. She'd already pushed Ned to execute unreliable George of Clarence, so what would she do as Edward V's regent, monarch in all but name?

Richard holds onto his regency, then lets his council convince him to take the crown. This leads to two  years of perpetual tragedy for Richard while rumors swirl about the fate of his nephews (Penman gives a plausible, non-Shakespearean fate for them). Broken and perhaps suicidal, Richard's fate on Bosworth Field is almost a given. The Tudors brought peace, and eventually prosperity to England, and in the final chapters Penman hints at how Richard's reputation will be altered for nearly 500 years by politically motivated authors. Penman's first novel sprawls across over 900 pages and I wanted to read it in a single sitting.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

The Habit of Murder

Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew books now span twelve of his years and twenty-three volumes. When a series gets this long, I start to worry about its ending. Particularly since Matt's coming wedding will end his association with Michaelhouse College. The ending, though, hints at a possible loophole.

The Habit of Murder has a very modern feel, despite it's 14th Century setting.  Matt, Brother Michael, and college head Langelee set out to pay their respects to (and hope for a bequest from) the Lady of Clare. They're accompanied by scholars from her wealthy namesake college and from St. Thomas (Swinecroft), including the now bitter man who founded the former and heads the latter.

The Lady, as it turns out, is not dead, but the village is in turmoil.  Just like Cambridge, there's conflict between the townsfolk and the supporting institution, in this case the Lady's castle.  The central cause appears to be the local church, the fan vaulted nave of which has been appropriated by the Lady, and the new south wing of which has been left to the town. Also like Cambridge, there seem to be a lot of unexpected deaths (or maybe Matt just has the bad luck to frequently encounter corpses). The chief mason, a local lord, and various people from the castle recently died under suspicious circumstances. Add in a vicar and an entire abbey of monks who are former warriors (one a former associate of Langelee), a sociable hermit (who reminds me of the Monty Python sketch - "The thing about being a hermit is that you get to meet people"), a comfort and gossip loving "holy" anchorite walled up in the church, and the castle's steward's 24-year-old prankster twins and it looks like Gregory is in a comic mood.

Then someone murders one of the Cambridge delegation, along with the steward's wife (she's one of the few good people in the town or castle). We learn that Anne, the anchorite, did not choose her calling but was the castle nurse banished for performing an abortion on a rape victim, and that she'd provided her (relatively) safe services on other women seduced and abandoned, or raped, by the castle squires. Published as #MeToo was peaking, this feels prescient, and Matt's focus on the danger rather than the ethics of abortion echoes modern discussions of the risks of legal restrictions driving abortion underground.

These plot lines all seem to be going in different directions until the last 40 pages, when Matt and Michael find the truly surprising cause linking the dates. They bring peace to Clare after a scene worthy of a modern action movie, but with a loss to Michaelhosue.  A loss, however, that may lead to a more stable future for the institution which has been on the edge of dissolution since A Vein of Deceit.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Just One Evil Act

Warning - potential spoiler

When an author I've loved disappoints me, I put them on probation.  I read a book or two (or more - Mary Higgins Clark teased me for nearly a decade with one good book out of every three), and if the series doesn't improve, I stop reading and donate my collection to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Some authors I give a little more leeway, like Elizabeth George.  Playing for the Ashes and For the Sake of Elena were so good that I gave her an extra book to redeem herself, and with Careless in Red, she showed that she deserved it.

She's back on probation. The best way I can describe Just One Evil Act is a total mess in which George defies logic to make life hell for Barbara Havers. The book opens a few hours after Believing the Lie ends, as Barbara frantically calls Lynley for help.  Her 9-year-old neighbor, Hidayyah Azhar has been kidnapped by her mother, Angela Uppman. Taymullah Azhar and Angela had never married (because he'd never divorced his wife who lives with their children and her parents in another part of London) and there's no father listed on Hidayyah's birth certificate.  Lynley confirms that there's nothing the police can do, so Barbara and Azhar hire a private investigator, who also claims to be unable to find Hidayyah.  A few months later, Angela and her Italian partner show up in London - someone kidnapped Hidayyah again, and of course they suspect her father. After a few hundred pages of shifting POV between Barbara, Lynley, Hidayyah's captor, and an Italian policeman, George returns a frightened but otherwise unharmed Hidayyah to her parents and they appear to work out a custody agreement.

If George had left it there, she'd have a mediocre mystery novel half as long as the incoherent doorstopper I slogged through. Angela dies from an e. coli infection about a week after Hidayyah's rescue, and Barbara learns from the quintuple-crossing (I think - I lost track of their deceptions) private investigators that Azhar (a microbiologist) had deceived her. I figured out the method and true culprit almost immediately, and found the motive contrived.  I also thought Lynley's subplot (a romance with a veterinarian who also skates for Birmingham's roller derby team) was unnecessary and uninvolving. 

The worst part, though, was how George treated Barbara Havers. Barbara has always been rough-edged, poorly dressed, and full of attitude.  This time, George went out of her way to describe her, and to do so as completely unattractive.  She's shifted Havers from merely prickly to obnoxiously insubordinate and deserving of the termination we spend the book expecting. As I've said in prior reviews, Barbara is a more interesting character - and better detective - than her aristocratic boss. So why did George decide to, well, trash her while perhaps permanently damaging her growing friendship with her neighbors?  I already have the next installment, so I'll probably read it.  I'm not looking forward to it, because I'm afraid it's the last Lynley/Havers book I'll read. 

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat

John McQuaid's Tasty starts with the discredited taste map of the tongue and travels through super tasters, cultural culinary differences, the Scoville scale and the quest for the world's hottest pepper, our taste for sweetness, and a handful of other topics. It's a good overview of the science and history of what and how we eat, and an almost ideal commute book.

Mary Tudor: England's First Queen

England's first Queen is in some ways England's forgotten Queen. It's easy to find biographies of Elizabeth I and Henry VIII, but even Alison Weir hasn't paid much attention to Mary Tudor.  I can understand why, because she's more of a reactive character and a pawn than her imperious father and politically astute half-sister. Intelligent but shunted aside for much of her life and used as a weapon against her mother, she made religious orthodoxy and the unsuccessful attempt to bear and heir the focus of her reign. Whitelock brings this overlooked woman to life, though, making her more compelling than one would expect of someone so thwarted by history.