Take a photo of a barcode or cover
lily_fitzg 's review for:
Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen
by Alison Weir
Historical accuracy was very good, and you could tell it was written by a historian. I enjoyed the focus on faith and Katherine’s perspective was a compelling look at the “Great Matter” which is often reduced to an affair of lust, but Weir manages to remove Anne Boleyn from the picture in a way that makes this (at least for Katherine) an affair of the church, not the heart. I imagine that the situation will be explored very differently in the next book.
This was not just a retelling of a story that has been told many, many times before, but felt fresh as it invested me in a perspective that is so far removed from my own views, so at odds with a secular, 21st reader, but I was still on her side. Most retellings fail to make me look at the situation with 16th century values in this way.
The style of writing was slightly odd, and did often feel like a non fiction account/slightly dry. It’s no Wolf Hall.
TLDR: I don’t usually find myself on the side of Catholicism, especially after having studied the state of the Church in England at the time, but this made me root against the reformers, not just for moral outrage on Katherine’s behalf.
This was not just a retelling of a story that has been told many, many times before, but felt fresh as it invested me in a perspective that is so far removed from my own views, so at odds with a secular, 21st reader, but I was still on her side. Most retellings fail to make me look at the situation with 16th century values in this way.
The style of writing was slightly odd, and did often feel like a non fiction account/slightly dry. It’s no Wolf Hall.
TLDR: I don’t usually find myself on the side of Catholicism, especially after having studied the state of the Church in England at the time, but this made me root against the reformers, not just for moral outrage on Katherine’s behalf.