Wideacre by Philippa Gregory

Books Read: 37
Completion Date: March 2007
Publication Year: 2003
Pages: 656
Owned Prior to 2007
Book 1 in the Wideacre Trilogy

Beatrice Lacey, as strong-minded as she is beautiful, refuses to conform to the social customs of her time. Destined to lose her family name and beloved Wideacre estate once she is wed, Beatrice will use any means necessary to protect her ancestral heritage. Seduction, betrayal, even murder — Beatrice's passion is without apology or conscience. "She is a Lacey of Wideacre," her father warns, "and whatever she does, however she behaves, will always be fitting." Yet even as Beatrice's scheming seems about to yield her dream, she is haunted by the one living person who knows the extent of her plans...and her capacity for evil.

Sumptuously set in Georgian England, Wideacre is intensely gripping, rich in texture, and full of color and authenticity. It is a saga as irresistible in its singular magic as its heroine.

I know that Phillippa Gregory is a lot of people's favourite historical fiction novelist, but I keep trying and I keep wondering what I am missing. It took me forever to read this book. I started it last year, actually, and am only just finishing it now! I kept hoping that it would get better, but it just did nothing for me.

I am left trying to explain why I did not like this book. I am pretty easy-going. Romance may not be my normal genre, but I will read it, so the fact that this book could easily be classified as a romantic historical fiction novel is not a turn off for me. I am also pretty open-minded when it comes to different styles of relationships in books. This book, though, is really just a book full of incest. It just got to be too much, I have to admit. Romance is one thinking, reading 500 pages of a girl bonking her brother started to get just a bit too much. If it was a small part or even a moderate part, I would not have minded it, but it just got out of hand.

I understand why the heroine is the way that she is. Women during her time period had very few chances to have a life for themselves, so she found herself trying to find a way to get the power she needed in order to have land. Controlling her brother would give her a better chance than any other plan, but it just was not my cup of tea. I have read better historical fiction books, that's for sure. I have no plans to read the rest of this trilogy, it might get better, but there are too many good books out there that I would rather read.

1/5

To read other reviews of Gregory's books I have read, just click the titles:
The Constant Princess
The Other Boelyn Girl
Bread and Chocolate
The Queen's Fool

Bread and Chocolate - Philippa Gregory [April/06]

I was a little iffy to read this collection of short stories by Philippa Gregory. Back when I bought it in January I had read The Constant Princess and The Other Boelyn Girl and liked both of them, but since then I have read The Queen's Fool and part of Wideacre. Was not a big fan of either. This left me wondering which category Bread and Chocolate would fall in to. It turned out to be a worthwhile read, with all the stories having a theme of disasterly lifestyles to them in some capacity. Someone else noted that there was only one short story in the collection that took place in the past, and that is surprising considering that Gregory is predominately a historial writer. You have to wonder what was going on when she wrote these short stories, a divorce or something tragic, becuase most of the characters in this collection are women unhappy with something in their life and fighting for what they want.

The Stories include:

"Bread and Chocolate" - About a monk who is offered a chance to be a television chef and meets a television chef regular who tempts him with chocolate cake....

"Coo-eee" - About a cruise guest lecturer who on one of his voyages meets a Yorkshire woman that is larger than life and leaves quite an impression on all that meet her... including the lecturer.

"The Favour" - This is the short story set in a historical setting. A young woman rejects her young lover and then is left with the consequences when he is fatally injured in a jousting competition.

"Theories About Men" - This woman thinks she has men all figured out, so when she finds out that her husband has been having an affair after many years of marriage she gets to put her theories to the test.

"Lady Emily's Swim" - An angry, bitter woman at the end of her life gets the chance to swim 20 laps a day as a gift from her daughter and the reader is left shocked by what goes through her mind while doing so.

"The If Game" - A story about a man who plays the "if" game with a colleague at work, but he is stuck in the "if" game and can never seem to think about the now, only about the "if".

"The Conjuring Trick" - A couple are living the dream, they have everything they want, but then the economy changes and they are left conjuring up a fantastic story to get money to buy off their extreme debts. See what happens to them as a result.

"The Wave Machine" - This is my favourite story in the book. It is about a little girl who is sent to live with her uncle while her mother pilots her father to daily doctor appointments. She has always lived in the city and so spends the summer looking for the Wave Machine that powers the ocean and making an impact on her Uncle's life.

"The Magic Box" - I think I had read this story before, but it is about a young woman faced with a unfaithful husband after she has already given up so much. Then she finds an old-fashioned camera and the reader sees the magic come alive...

"The Garden" - A woman who has a controlling husband, one that even attempts to control nature, gets revenge for his wrongs.

"The Last Swan" - A tale about young girls that join a national synchronized swimming team and one girl that defies a young man that thinks he knows everything.

"The Bimbo" - A bimbo comes to work for a London law firm, but by the end of the story she might be smarter than she looks.

"Going Down River" - A man with all his learnings goes to live with an undocumented tribe and write his thesis. The reader soon learns that he might not know everything.

"The Other Woman" - A woman finds out that her husband is cheating and decides she needs to learn about this other woman which results in her getting closer than she originally planned.

"The Visitor" - A couple who want everything perfect receive an unexpected visitor for the holidays who shakes their life up.

"Catching the Bus" - A woman has saved to one day make a better life for one of her children, this is her moment.

This was an interesting collection of short stories and an enjoyable read for the most part. Good to see that it is possible to like some of Gregory's work again.

3.5/5

The Queen's Fool - Philippa Gregory (January/06)

I was so disappointed with this novel. I had read two of Gregory's novels all ready and really enjoyed them, so I thought that this would just be the next enjoyable read and a good way to start the new year. I did not like it. It started off really interesting, with the main character being a member of the poorer class, and not a royalty member like the main character was in The Other Boelyn Girl and The Constant Princess, but that quickly lost its appeal to me. I think the best way that I can describe my disappointment was I wanted to know more about the royal court, I was not interested in someone that was not even connected to it at all times. It is a hard book for me to digest because one minute you think that you are supposed to concentrating on Hannah Green, the main character, and then the next minute all the focus is on the royal court and you wonder what is happening to Hannah. I can see how some people would like this method of telling the story, but it just annoyed me.

When the novel opens we find out that Hannah is a Jew on the run. The Jewish religion has been banned from most of the countries of the world and Hannah is constantly looking for a place where she can be save. This takes her to England and through a series of events into the English court where she serves both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I while she is still just a princess waiting for her sister to step aside. Hannah is very much an early feminist, her father has led her to believe that she can do whatever she wants as he dressed her up as his apprentice, so she has always known mens clothing. This leads her to some interesting scenerios because she is betrothed to a Jewish male, and she has a hard time getting around to marrying him. At first, the male, Daniel, annoyed me because he seemed really pushy and she just wanted to be herself, but by the end of the novel she was too feminist for me and he was just a typical male. Do not get me wrong, feminism is good, but she was annoying about it, I just have to say it. You spend the whole book waiting for them to get together and then when they finally do, she rejects him again. It is almost comical, but annoying at the same time.

The backdrop to what could be called a romance story, is the British court and Hannah's role as the Queen's fool. She is not your typical fool, though, because in some things she is actually quite smart and has the ability to forsee the future. She has visions, and one of her chief purposes in the novel is to advise the queen, princess, and other allies that she has collected along the way. Her father is a book seller, who finds that his books are always breaking one rule or another depending on who is in power. It has all the makings of an interesting novel, it just did not interest me. I still think that if the last hundred pages or so were not there I would like it a lot more. The ending is particualarly bad because a lot of things happen and she gets seperated from Daniel once again, and when she finally gets back with him... the novel just ends. I wanted to know what happened with them, were they happy, did she leave again. It just seems that in the end all that mattered was the happenings at court and not Hannah afterall. That bothered me. A lot of things bothered me. Still, I can't give it a terrible grade because there were some good parts.

I give it a 3/5

The Other Boelyn Girl - Philippa Gregory (December/05)

I liked The Constant Princess so much that I decided it was time to read another novel by Gregory. The Other Boelyn Girl is technically the first novel in the Tudor series, but the events in The Constant Princess happen first, so I read it first. I find that new readers would likely enjoy it in that order as well. If you have all ready started the series, you would not have that luxury.

The Other Boelyn Girl is my favourite Philippa Gregory novel so far. There is more happening in it than in The Constant Princess. The essence of the novel is "Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king." Henry VIII is a womanizer who is getting bored with his current wife and starts pursuing other women in the court. Two of these women are the sisters Mary and Anne Boelyn. The king gains an interest in Mary first, and they have two children together, and then along comes Anne who is more conniving than her younger sister and changes the game to include herself as chief player.

The two sisters are just pawns in their families need to rise to power. There is no love, it is all about duty. There is so much going on in this novel. It is told from the view of Mary Boelyn, so it is only the activities that she witnesses happening. She, in the end, turns out to be the braver of the two sisters when she defies her families plans and makes a new life for herself.

When I read the book I was very engrossed in it, this is one of those books where I found myself staring at the page and having a hard time putting it down to do things like go to sleep. I found myself hating Anne, and there were a couple moments where I hoped for her demise. She was very selfish, and you really feel bad for her younger sister Mary and older brother George. They are living their life to satisfy their sisters needs. It is a terrible way to live. I especially felt bad for George, his dream lifestyle was something that would be the end of him.

A must read for all historical fiction fans.

5/5

The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory (December/05)

My first Philippa Gregory novel! I had seen her books before, but it took a recommendation on a forum I visit to get me reading her. It was worth the read. I read most of it in one day. I just had a few pages left the next morning, which is impressive because it is a long book. I just kept wanting to know what was going to happen next, so I just kept reading.

The Constant Princess starts when the main character, Catalina, is five years old and living in Spain where her mother and father are the king and queen. She had been raised all her love to be a queen, though, because from the time she was young she was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir to the British crown. She knew it was her destiny to rule, and she lived her entire life with that goal in mind. She finds it hard to adjust when the time comes for her to venture to Britain. She is far away from her family in a strange land, and she is not even sure if she likes her husband. It takes time, but soon she learns to adapt to the life around her and enjoy the time with her husband a little more. Then, tragedy strikes when the husband she has learned to love dies leaving her all alone in a strange court and the farthest away she has ever been from her dream of being Queen.

For the first time in her charmed life, Catalina is alone in the world. She has to make the decisions that she has to make in order to one day be seated on the crown. This means marrying Arthur's younger brother, Henry. He is spoiled and a considerable bit younger, but she knows this is her only way to make her destiny. Henry's relatives are against the idea and her parents are far away and of little use, so her destiny rests entirely in her own hands. Her mother taught her well, though, she sees her goal and will not give up until she has achieved it. Even if she has to lie.

This novel is the last written in the Tudor series, but the events actually take place first. It is a novel about the indominable spirit of a young woman who never backed down from what she had waited for all her life. It is a wonderful and well-written novel. You find yourself laughing with her and crying. You feel like you are on the sidelines cheering on the happy ending that you and her are waiting for. If you have never read Philippa Gregory before, now is the time to start. For historical fiction fans, this is the book that you cannot put down.

I give this book a 4/5.

I also have the rest of the series to read:
The Other Boelyn Girl
The Queen's Fool
The Virgin's Lover