Book Review: Living in the Past

Book Review: The Past

Another book review! Non-fiction and Suspense are here and here. This time I’m grouping books about the past, set in the past, or where a character’s past plays a big part in the story. I used to post them on my Instagram as well, but since no one saw them, or was shown them, I stopped. On a side note, I’ve been reviewing where my time goes and what is worth it. This is a whole other blog as it ties into why I felt the need to pursue something and the decision to stop it.

But, back to the reviews, I took the time to dive little deeper than what I’d have posted on the ‘gram, really trying to share my thoughts on what I did enjoy and did not and especially why. At the same time, trying not to spoil it.

Crow Lake – Mary Lawson

Crow Lake is the story of the Morrison family as told through the eyes of Katie, who is only eight, when tragedy strikes her family. At the time, her sister Bo is an infant and her older brothers Luke and Matt, are 19 and 17 respectively.

Crow Lake is a family bound together by love and loss. By tough decisions and sacrifices and surviving. But there’s beauty in thriving despite circumstances, perhaps it’s the unspoken love that makes it possible. Maybe it’s hope, or devotion or maybe the drive to survive Despite an unconventional upbringing, despite dire circumstances and the odds seeming against them, they manage and are not unhappy. In fact, things turn out pretty good.

But it’s also about what defines happiness, and the fallacy of measuring it by one single metric. Especially one rooted in the past. What was supposed to be and what is can be very different, but both can be a happy ending. Neither needs to be a tragedy.

Katie is now almost 30, a university professor, biologist and researcher, living in Toronto. She’s preparing to go back to Crow Lake, her small hometown in northern Ontario, to visit her family. But there’s a constant unease when she returns, and visits have been few and far between. In the weeks leading up to the trip, she reflects back over her family’s past and how their lives didn’t work out as planned and her feelings of guilt. Katie feels sorry for everyone else, especially Matt, but this visit finally makes her realize that maybe she’s been looking at life through the wrong lens and measuring happiness and success with the wrong tools.

By usual standards, Katie is the most successful and should be the happiest. Yet that’s not the case. Despite being a researcher, she fails to see that her conclusions don’t fit her observations. She’s using the wrong measuring stick. But on this visit, she finally sees things clearly.

I really liked this story and recommend it. It’s told in the low-key manner of most Canadian literary fiction, with complex relationships and psychological depth. Lawson masters ‘show-don’t tell’, and you’re left surmising motivations. When this is well done, as in this case, you want to find someone to have coffee with and discuss it in detail. One of the best examples is, although it’s never explicitly said either, how the community of Crow Lake works together, in the background, to support the Morrisons.

The House at Riverton – Kate Morton

The ending was not what I was led to expect and so much more tragic!

It’s 1999 and Grace Bradley is now almost 100. When documentary film director Ursula comes to ask her about her memories of Riverton, and the death that took place there, she is plunged back to a time and place long since passed, the tragic events of 1924 and the secrets she’s kept.

It’s 1913, and 14 year old Grace enters service at the country estate of Lord Ashbury. A position secured for her by her mother, who also worked there until she became pregnant with Grace.

At Riverton her life becomes intertwined with those of the aristocratic Hartford sisters, Hannah and Emmeline, grandchildren of Lord Ashbury. There’s also their brother David, the Game the 3 have invented and secretly play, and David’s friend Robbie Hunter.

Grace says little to Ursula, answering her questions but not adding anything more. But she begins to record all her memories on tapes she sends to her estranged writer grandson. As she tells her story more questions arise. How did this maid later become an archeologist? Did her mother have to leave service because she was unwed and pregnant? Who was her father? How did the infamous tragedy at Riverton unfold?

Finally, after decades, Grace is ready to relinquish the secrets surrounding that fateful night when Robbie Hunter died at Riverton. But even now, how reliable is Grace’s recounting, after we learn of her bond with Hannah? And is what Grace suspects, of her and Hannah, true?

The author does a wonderful job of telling us a story through the eyes of an ailing 99-year-old woman, and recapturing turn of the 20th century aristocratic Britain. The all pervasive class distinction between Upstairs and Downstairs and even among the servants themselves. The Great War that brought loss, change and marked the end of an era.

There are no perfect characters here and we are left to wonder at motives, mistakes, human failings, and even Grace’s recollections. And just when it seems that Grace’s tale is told, she has one last surprise left for Ursula.

Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies – Haley Nolan

This one was really so-so for me. The book burning was a definite no. Let me explain. And it’s a bit long, as it seems with a book one does not like.

I’ve read and watched a lot on English history and the Tudor period. I’m a fan. So I was eager to read this book by Hayley Nolan who wants to set the story straight about Anne Boleyn. Because, as the tagline implies, it has been 500 years of lies.

What I liked

There were ideas that were new to me that I appreciated learning about as it adds another facet to what really caused Anne Boleyn’s downfall. Even today, opinions do vary. Many think that giving birth to a son would have saved her. But maybe not. Here are a few point the author makes.

Nolan shows Anne as a great supporter of the Reformation. The Reformation did not mean a new religion -that came later- and in fact Henry VIII was very Catholic and pious, as was Anne. But it did mean a new way of doing things, namely having mass said in English and bibles printed in English. This meant the church was no longer the gatekeeper between God and men and women. At the time no one had a direct relationship with God. The clergy was there to explain, interpret and guide, making them all powerful.

Anne was introduced to reform by the French King’s sister, Marguerite d’Angoulême, during Anne’s time at the French court. Anne was about 14 when she went to France and spent 7 years there. Later she continued to support reformists, and owned books that were disapproved by the Church. Support of the Reformation also meant supporting Martin Luther’s criticism of the Church. It was flirting with heresy.

Anne didn’t set out to trap the king or play a strategic game of hard to get. In fact, she had been sent away from Court for entertaining a romance with Henry Percy, the son of an earl. He was way above her commoner station. So it seems unlikely Anne would think she could snare a king.

We have to look at the events through the lens of Henry suffering from mental illness, namely, being a sociopath. I agree with the author, he was. Also, I think his famous jousting accident, where he was unconscious for several hours, led to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Nolan also points to his childhood. When his brother died, Henry became the only son and heir. He lived a strange, secluded life. Few people could approach him for fear he’d get sick and everyone treated him with a huge amount of deference. It was a strange life. He lived isolated, but worshipped.

Henry was very close to his mother, as his father’s attentions had been on Arthur, and her death affected him greatly. Other historians have pointed out that he was fearful of his father, Henry VII, the first Tudor king (the dynasty lasted only 3 generations) and his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. Margaret is a story unto herself: child bride pregnant at 12, a widowed mother at 13, she was the driving force that put her son on the throne of England.

Added to that, or even notwithstanding the TBI theory, is that fact that he was the 2nd generation of Tudor monarchs. Securing and keeping that position required being ruthless. Especially as his father had won the crown on the battlefield, defeating Edward III, the last Plantagenet king, who died there. There were, of course, people alive who remembered the former King and certainly those who supported that line. The Tudor claim on the crown was tenuous.

When Henry does propose marriage, Anne sees she can support the Reformists from a position of power. And she would champion their cause. She also helped the poor and wanted the monies from the dissolution of the monasteries used to fight poverty and not fatten the king’s coffers. In fact, she also had had a poor law drafted. Unfortunately, she died before it was passed. But while she was alive and supporting this, in the eyes of his advisors, she was an impediment between those riches and the king. If the king kept it all, some would trickle down to them.

The Reason for Anne’s Downfall

Nolan points to her support of the Reformation as her downfall. Cromwell, the king’s close advisor, was tasked with wooing Spain. As there was tension with France, England wanted their ties with Spain to be good. Cromwell had his work cut out for him, as the king of Spain was the nephew of Henry’s deposed Queen, Katherine of Aragon. Charles 5th was also Holy Roman Emperor whose role it was to defend the Church.

Katherine was a Spanish princess, daughter of the late king and aunt of the present king. She was Queen of England until Henry annulled their marriage. She never agreed to that and never recognized Anne as Queen.

To accomplish the annulment, he broke from Rome and announced that he was the head of the Church in England (not the Church of England, he was still Catholic, but running things himself). The Church excommunicated Henry. Spain doubly took offense. Henry could not afford to be at odds with France (the 100 years war ended only 40 years before he was born) and Spain at the same time.

Betrothals between the princesses Mary (Katherine’s daughter) and Elizabeth (Anne’s daughter) and the Spanish royal family were proposed in order to create an alliance. But nothing came of it. Spain also did not recognize Anne as Henry’s wife or Queen.

Cromwell’s Plot

Cromwell decided he had no way out, except to rid the King of Anne. Spain would ‘forgive’ Henry and they would forge an alliance. This would never happen with Reformist Anne, the woman who had replaced the true Queen (at least in the eyes of the Spanish King) and rebuked the traditions of the catholic church. He also worried her Poor Law would weaken the monarchy by depriving it (the king) of funds. In other words, Anne was costing Henry dearly.

He piled on so much so called evidence, the tactic seeming to be that if there was enough and it was preposterous enough, Henry would have otherwise choice but to react in order to save face. Cromwell secretly orchestrated everything without the king or queen knowing. He set up the commission to try Anne well ahead of her arrest, and that of her conspirators. He convinced the king to reconvene parliament under false pretenses to do just that.

I have trouble believing Cromwell would take such a risk. We know that Henry was unstable and unpredictable. He could have very well turned around and ordered Cromwell‘s death for lying and forging proof that his wife was having affairs. But maybe Cromwell felt if the evidence was damning enough the king couldn’t back out for appearance sake, even if he knew it was false. Or he would see the opportunity and go along with it.

Personally, I think Henry knew. What motivated him exactly? The belief that God frowned on their union and was never going to give him a son? That Anne was a liability and going to cause a war? Maybe he really was a sociopath and had simply tired of her?

This was where you lost me

The constant claim that Anne was–and still is– portrayed solely as a ‘tarty little whore’ (direct quote), a sexual blackmailer, schemer and manipulator is just not true. The author exaggerates this point to justify that she is righting the wrongs. I think we all know by now Anne wasn’t a witch or a genius manipulator who played the king so well he broke with Rome, annulled his marriage and married her. We also know Anne had a lot of detractors, and they could say what they wanted after her execution. While those who called foul had to keep quiet. She did not come from a historic aristocratic family, her grandfather had been a chiney sweep, so slander was easy.

I don’t think she married Henry purely to further the Reformation cause. While religion was important, and the cause was near and dear to her heart, who would say no to becoming Queen of England? The Boleyn’s were ambitious. This would be more than her father or brother could ever hope to achieve. And her father had been successful, her brother even more so, becoming a close friend of the King.

I particularly didn’t like the flippant, snarky tone. It pervades the book. It sounds contrived, as if the author is trying to create a situation in order to give even more weight that she is setting things straight by showing how misrepresented Anne has been and how sexist society was. Yes, we know, men had more rights than women and marriages were political alliances, and women’s job was to produce heirs. And when they failed it or produced only girls, was because something was wrong with them (oh but for grade 9 biology). But at some point, get over it, and look at how things played out in that context.

To Google for an Opinion

I googled the author after I finished the book, wondering if it was only me. It wasn’t. Nolan is an educated historian, she hold a masters from King’s College. But that tone, that her site refers to a ‘straight talk’ and ‘corrective biography not for the romantics’, just did not sit well. Again, creating a problem in order to solve it.

She is very present on social media, especially TikTok, a platform that does not lend itself to in-depth analysis (choosing my words here). Gaining views may be the goal and may explain why she, allegedly, burned Alison Weir’s Anne Boleyn book as a publicity stunt. So no. Just no.

I also came across this excellent and comprehensive review by Heather Teysko: https://www.englandcast.com/2019/11/anne-boleyn-500-years-of-lies-isnt-worth-your-time-or-money/

World Without End

World Without End is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. In fact, it’s more like something in between a sequel and a carbon copy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book. The story is engaging and I liked all the interesting facts about life in the 1300’s. It moves along, between several characters, all connected, but all with their own stories. But the set up is the same. Which is good when your first book of the series has been an international bestseller and turned into a miniseries.

It has, like it’s predecessor, the usual cast: willful female main character, the gifted builder/architect, the star crossed lovers (see previous characters), the wicked male character that makes life miserable for others, the irritating church leaders with self-serving motives and bad medical practices, and life in the medieval town of Kingsbridge. Kingsbridge Cathedral is now almost 100 years old, and so the story takes up a century later.

Four children who meet at the annual fleece fair. Caris is the daughter of a wealthy wool merchant. Merthin and Ralph are the sons of a knight who it about to lose his fortune. Gwenda is the daughter of a thief. They witness and event that they never speak of to anyone. But only Merthin knows what really happened.

The story follow them, and Kingsbridge, over the years. There is conflict between merchants and prior to modernise, starting with the bridge. Disagreements between monks and nuns over medical practices, one rooted in theory and one in practice and observation. There are successes and reversals and betrayals. All in all, a good read, but not deep. If, like me, you enjoy english history (didn’t I already mention that?) it’s quite interesting. And at over 1000 pages, gives you some reader flex.