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mishasbooknook 's review for:
The Other Boleyn Girl
by Philippa Gregory
The Other Boleyn Girl is ALMOST Mean Girls meets the Tudor Court. There is cattiness, political intrigue, back stabbing, and drama on every page.
Whether it is historically accurate is up for debate, but that does not lessen it's nail-biting drama that entraps it's readers.
The Other Boleyn Girl is a very dark book telling the story of a very dark time in England's history - when an entire court was thrown into disarray over King Henry VIII's mad dash to have a son and legitimate heir.
All that said, for me there were a few problems with the book: Mary is very bland as a protagonist. The only true characterizations I got from her is that she was a unaware bystander - in the inner circle of a backstabbing and nasty court, but not a part of it herself - the maternal pure woman who is "so unlike" the rest of her family, and that she loved her children. That's it. For me, it made her boring.
Another problem I had was that Mary was obviously a mouthpiece for 21st century feminist values. I felt that instead of reading a true characterization of Mary Boleyn(or what little facts we have of her life), we got Gregory's values and words from Mary as her mouthpiece - the words didn't feel like they came from Mary herself. Now, I'm a feminist myself, but this was a bit jarring and almost unbelievable for me - what woman in the 1500's would spout essentially feminist views over her own station in life? It would have been far more believable to have her simply struggle for survival and make a self preservative choice, not rail against how 16th Century Europe treated women and had treated women for centuries.
Otherwise, this is a good book - well written and fast paced, so long as you emphasize it as FICTION - because there were quite a few liberties taken with historical fact in this novel.
Whether it is historically accurate is up for debate, but that does not lessen it's nail-biting drama that entraps it's readers.
The Other Boleyn Girl is a very dark book telling the story of a very dark time in England's history - when an entire court was thrown into disarray over King Henry VIII's mad dash to have a son and legitimate heir.
All that said, for me there were a few problems with the book: Mary is very bland as a protagonist. The only true characterizations I got from her is that she was a unaware bystander - in the inner circle of a backstabbing and nasty court, but not a part of it herself - the maternal pure woman who is "so unlike" the rest of her family, and that she loved her children. That's it. For me, it made her boring.
Another problem I had was that Mary was obviously a mouthpiece for 21st century feminist values. I felt that instead of reading a true characterization of Mary Boleyn(or what little facts we have of her life), we got Gregory's values and words from Mary as her mouthpiece - the words didn't feel like they came from Mary herself. Now, I'm a feminist myself, but this was a bit jarring and almost unbelievable for me - what woman in the 1500's would spout essentially feminist views over her own station in life? It would have been far more believable to have her simply struggle for survival and make a self preservative choice, not rail against how 16th Century Europe treated women and had treated women for centuries.
Otherwise, this is a good book - well written and fast paced, so long as you emphasize it as FICTION - because there were quite a few liberties taken with historical fact in this novel.